Sustainability and Health

As director of a Head Start program, I am extremely supportive of promoting good nutrition for young children. The children enrolled in Head Start programs come from families that qualify based on 100% poverty level income. This knowledge leads us to consider circumstances that may be impact young children and families. Many children come to school hungry, lacking accessibility to food at home.

Fortunately Head Start funding requires that meals are provided for children. We provide a hot breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack for full day programs. Children arriving to school can look forward to having a meal on a daily basis, never having to guess if food will be available or not. One challenge that we had as a program is food portion sizes. The meals are provided by DOE cafeterias, and they tend to be extremely strict with USDA serving sizes. Problems would arise when foods like hot dog, french fries, orange slices, or any food that required a set quantity per serving. In the event a piece of food falls on the ground, the staff will have to give up a part of their serving to provide children with a replacement. Another frustration is children wanting to have second servings due to hunger or because the food is a popular item. It took a great deal of negotiating with the cafeteria managers to convince them, or perhaps I should reword the process as educating them, regarding how Head Start children come to school hungry. The result was favorable, resulting in more food being offered per serving. Children and adults have adequate servings to eat until satisfied.

Another issue that affects nutrition is the quality of foods served by the cafeteria. Foods tend to be high in salt, fat, and preservatives. A large amount of the foods are highly processed with low nutrition value. One of the long term (strategic plans) for MEO Head Start is to research other food preparation services available on Maui to partner with another company. The goal is to find a program that is USDA certified, and that prepares food in a natural, whole way so nutrients are at its peak. Living in Hawaii, we have a great deal of fresh foods to offer young children. My hope to achieve this goal within the next three years.

We have a consultant nutritionist that reviews growth charts of enrolled children to determine if the child is at risk for obesity. We have, in the past, created meal plans for these children. Head Start promotes "family style" meal service, asking that children serve themselves independently. Children with weight concerns need to be monitored for serving size, with teachers available to sensitively guide children instead of placing blame or shame.

Regarding health, it's important to have policies and procedures in place that directly impact general health of young children and staff. Some ideas that we have incorporated is a child health check conducted upon arrival to school, disclosure of child allergies and other medical needs prior to enrollment so teachers and program can be designed to support child, a medication administration policy, a sick child policy, and others that promote assistance for young children.

Oral health is an important part of our health program. Several Head Start children are plagued with baby-bottle mouth where teeth are decayed at a young age due to sugary liquids that erode teeth to the gums. Dental caries are seriously dangerous for young children as it can cause painful infections and can damage future permanent teeth. The Head Start program within our state have a current initative to work collaboratively with dentist to establish a "dental home" for children and families. This means that families will have a dentist accessible regardless of the ability to pay for services.

Facilities are cleaned daily by staff, with regular parent workdays to assist with the upkeep of larger cleaning tasks (windows, etc.). Toys need to be disinfected, especially now with N1H1 concerns. I believe that young children can take part in the cleaning by using safe products like water and mild soap. Teachers can do the bleach solution part of the disinfecting, however the cleaning can be done with children's assistance. It's a good way to incorporate water play and achieve cleanliness at the same time.

Regarding safety, my program has a Accident Prevention Policies and Procedures document posted in each center location. The document offers agreements that incorporate safety precautions for adults working with young children. This includes staff and classroom volunteers.
Safety precautions also include having staff trained in CPR and First Aid, training in Mandated Reporting, and to pass all criminal clearances as required by DHS licensing.

Safety precautions include conducting monthly fire evacuations, and other practices to know what to do in case of an emergency. We actually experience one center in Lahaina that had a brush fire happen immediately outside their front door. It happened during naptime and the children were asleep. They escaped unharmed, with bare feet and many were startled from their sleep. Teachers carried them out to safety. It was an important learning experience, especially because we recognized that the playground lacked an exit to safety when the front area was threatened by fire. We are currently in the process of replacing all fenced area to include two additional gate exits from the playground.

Sustainability is a challenge for Head Start and for a large group of early childhood programs. Paying teachers what they deserve would provide no funding left over for other program operating costs. It's a problem that impacts most preschool programs. Several blogs posted reflects on the current situation with DHS and Childcare Connection. If approved, this decision has the capacity to place children in unsafe childcare situations, and force preschool programs to cut enrollment and staff. This will add to the high unemployment rate by having teachers be out of work. Having a state funded preschool program sounds like a great idea, and I'm all for it ONLY if the state steps back to provide decision making to be done exclusively by early childhood professionals. The Early Learning Council has worked long and hard to create a plan for our state. Now, due to politics and perhaps other factors, this group of dedicated professionals may not receive the level of support that was first thought to be secure. It seems like our field is taking several steps backward at this time and I find it frustrating. Programs depend on tuition to operate and, in most circumstances, tuition come from families. In order to increase wages, programs need to increase tuition. How can we operate programs of quality with limited funding? It's a sad day when tuition subsidy is threatened to be sacrificed for the economy. I predict that this decision, if passed, will replicate the furlough plan. In the longrun, the plan is not foolproof and does not come without serious consequences.

Okay...I'm off my soapbox now. I'll take a deep breath and move to my pick of the week for Exchange Everyday. I really appreciated the "Getting Unstuck" feature on Nov. 26, 2009. The suggestions offered by Jessica Seck Marquis are great ideas, especially the "shimmy and shake" recommendation. I love working out - it creates a diversion of thinking and allows me to do something good for my body. It's a means of stress management. Some of my best ideas are generated during my workouts, therefore I fully agree the creativity does flow much more when I move my body. The third suggestion of "Dream" is what gets us to our goals. I've been told that the most successful leaders had one thing in common - a vision. As an administrator, I have a vision of my program. I see its potential and work collaboratively with staff and parents to build systems to get us there. I know this will happen in time.

In response to the posted comment, I do believe that teachers can balance their objectivity and love for children at the same time. While doing assessments, we capture snapshots of children to build an individual plan that supports cognitive, motor, language or social /emotional development. The preschool stories support these snapshots by putting it into a narrative form. It's like words of a song written on paper, then playing it to music. The two flow together to create a completed piece. Assessment and the stories flow together to create an image of a complete person - in this case, a child's story. I fully understand how we need to objectively look at children, however we can still make determinations based on fact and write stories about those experiences. Each one would be different because it represents an individual child - so precious and so uniquely authentic.