In Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Head Start

Floor Speech

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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, it is my great honor and pleasure to extend my sincerest congratulations to the students, parents, staff, and supporters of the Head Start program as they celebrate 50 remarkable years of eliminating poverty through education, services, and partnerships. Enrichment Services Program, Inc. (ESP) will celebrate Head Start's 50th anniversary on Thursday, May 7, 2015 at noon at the Columbus Convention and Trade Center in Columbus, Georgia.

After President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty in his 1964 State of the Union speech, Sargent Shriver, a key social and political figure, took the lead in assembling a panel of experts to develop a comprehensive child development program that would help communities meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool children. The brainchild of this panel was Head Start, a program designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with the tools and resources to meet their emotional, social, nutritional, and psychological needs.

In 1965, the Office of Economic Opportunity launched an eight-week program called Project Head Start. Fifty years later, Head Start has served more than 30 million children, becoming an integral component of America's education system.

Enrichment Services Program, Inc. is a community action agency that provides essential services to alleviate poverty levels, promote family stability, and gradually build self-sufficiency. It was established in 1964 and operated as the Community Action Development Committee. The Agency was incorporated in 1965 as the ``Lower Chattahoochee Community Action Agency, Inc.'' In 1974, when President Gerald Ford signed the Head Start Economic Opportunity and Community Partnership Act, Head Start funding was allocated to local community action agencies such as ESP.

Enrichment Services Program, Inc. administers the Early Head Start and Head Start programs within a nine-county area, including Chattahoochee, Clay, Harris, Muscogee, Quitman, Randolph, Stewart, and Talbot counties, located in Georgia, and Russell County in Alabama. Each year, ESP serves approximately 1,000 children ages 0-5 from low-income families.

The Head Start program has been essential to the early childhood development and forward progression of many children and their families. Head Start evaluates and works to improve six domains of early childhood development: social/emotional, physical, language, cognitive, literacy, and mathematics. Through Head Start, ESP addresses the basic needs of each child and prepares them for entry into kindergarten. ESP also encourages parent involvement by offering services such as family literacy functions and parental input into the curriculum.

In the 2013-2014 program year, children in ESP's Head Start program made remarkable accomplishments. In the Cognitive domain alone, an average of 96% of children exceeded growth range. There were 505 three- and four-year-olds who were ready to read by the end of the school year.

Enrichment Services Program, Inc. has done an outstanding job of administering the Head Start program in the area that it serves. Because of the dedication and commitment of the teachers and the staff, thousands of children have gone on to achieve greater heights in primary, secondary, and higher education than they otherwise would have done. I firmly believe that Head Start's outreach will continue to help preschool children and their families overcome the cycle of poverty to lead successful and productive lives.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me and the more than 730,000 residents of Georgia's Second Congressional District in expressing our profound gratitude to Enrichment Services Program, Inc. and to Head Start for working to improve educational outcomes for preschool children, which not only produces positive effects throughout their lives but also creates a ripple effect of improvement in the communities in which they live.

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