Head Start Needs Support to Continue Supporting Families During COVID-19
By: Michelle Rahl-Lewis, Assistant Director Early Learning, Tacoma School District
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned life upside down for everyone, especially for the more than 400 served by our Head Start program. These families were already struggling with poverty, homelessness, and other challenges to stability before the ripple effects of this virus added another level of crisis to their lives. Yet while schools and child cares across Washington State were shutting their doors, many in our community were still able to rely on Head Start for critical support and connection.
Although our Head Start programs temporarily closed their centers to reduce the spread of COVID-19, all of our staff continued providing critical services to children and families remotely. They helped meet families’ basic needs, such as providing food, and also checked in with families once a week to help them navigate unemployment applications and emergency services. Family support advocates reached out to families struggling financially to make sure they were aware of resources such as the district’s food pick-up locations, had access to mental health supports, and could lean on other community resources for support during the pandemic. We are proud of how our team moved quickly to cover the basic needs of children and families at a time when many other support systems began shutting down.
Our Head Start team also found new ways to provide social-emotional support and a virtual preschool model so that children could continue learning remotely. Most families without a device in the home were loaned an iPad so they could access materials. Lessons were designed for the parent and child to work on at their own pace.
As we move into the next phase of the COVID-19 crisis, Head Start will need help to continue its important role as a stabilizing support system for at-risk children and families, and also to allow children to return to on-site programming over the next few months.
This fall, the Tacoma Public Schools has decided to go to an all-remote approach. We are already putting plans in place so that we are prepared and ready to serve children on site.
Re-opening safely will require new dollars that are not in our existing budget. We will need protective gear for our teachers such as masks and smocks, thermometers, cleaning supplies, pop-up tents to provide outdoor spaces that are covered, and additional staffing to reduce teacher to child ratios so we can maintain social distancing. We are also likely to have to purchase new school supplies to limit sharing among children and have more individualized learning activities and spaces. We’ll also need to provide materials that can be lent to families to extend learning opportunities for their children at home.
I hope that as Congress negotiates a final relief package they will ensure that Head Start programs can continue to provide remote services to children and families this fall and provide us with a modest boost in funding so we can bring the children we serve back to school when it’s safe.
