Thread: Look Where Some Of Your Tax Dollars Are Going

Giving migrant kids a Head Start
This story was published Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

JOE CHAPMAN HERALD STAFF WRITER

The soft voice of 5-year-old Christian Beristain doesn't convey the excitement he feels about attending the Washington State Migrant Council's child development center in Pasco.

On a recent afternoon, he was reading books there with about 10 other children of area agricultural workers. "Christian B." was scrawled on a piece of masking tape plastered to his T-shirt, and he had a book, Y El Gran Oso Hambriento, or And the Big Hungry Bear, tucked under his arm.

In a barely audible voice, in Spanish, he whispered that he likes playing at the center: on the computer or with toy dinosaurs, or going outside. He has attended for about a month, and already he has made a friend, Jarell.

Christian is one of 2,200 children in Washington receiving child-care and preschool services through the migrant council's Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program this agricultural season. The program's 20 sites provide free day care, educational and health screening services to children whose parents work seasonal agricultural jobs.

Demand for the services has prompted the council to plan expansions at several of its facilities.

The Pasco I center Christian attends, which serves 125 children, will gain capacity for 50 more children next year. A site in Basin City, which serves 155 children now, will be expanded to serve 50 more next year. Another center in Pasco, at 1010 S. Sixth Ave., serves 150 children.

The migrant council offers services to its clients regardless of whether the parents are in the country legally or illegally. The federal Head Start program, administered in Washington, D.C., doesn't require clients to have legal residency.

The program is geared to address a humanitarian need as well as put a young portion of society on a path to productivity when they're older.

"We don't want to have these kids out in the fields if the migrant workers can't find child care," said Blanca Garza, director of the Basin City child development center. "We need to keep them away from the chemicals, the tractors and whatever else there is in the fields."

The council has tracked some of its children going on to graduate from high school and college. A nonprofit organization headquartered in Sunnyside, the migrant council has received one of the federal Head Start contracts for the state for 24 years now.

The Yakima-based Enterprise for Progress in the Community also is contracted for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start in the state.

This year, the Head Start office in Washington, D.C., granted the migrant council $21.5 million, of which $19 million will go to operating costs. The other $2.5 million will go to build four new child development centers and expand six existing sites.

Cristina Klatovsky, director of program development for the council, acknowledged criticism of the funding.

"We're always going to get some people who look at it and feel like it's an incredible amount of money for migrant and seasonal workers," she said.

But the way the program operates causes the expenses to add up, she said. Eighty-five percent of the operating costs are for personnel. Because the children are young -- they're eligible from 1 month old until they turn 6 years old -- they require a low teacher-child ratio.

The centers provide one teacher for every four infant or toddler and one teacher for every 10 preschoolers.

The council's buses, on which the same teacher-child ratios are maintained, are another cost. The buses pick some of the children up from their homes in the mornings and drops some off at their homes or other day-care providers in the afternoons.

One person who appreciates the availability of those services is Ana Maria Ramirez, 32. She and her husband are living in Pasco until they go back to Tecomn, Colima, Mexico, in November.

Ramirez said she is able to be in the country legally because her husband was born in California.

She usually drops off her daughters, Mariana, 2, and Melina, 5 months old, at the Pasco I center by 6 a.m. so she and her husband can report to work at Bakers Produce in Kennewick by 7 a.m., she explained in Spanish. At the plant, she bundles asparagus, and he drives a forklift.

Sometimes they work until 4 or 5 p.m., but on peak production days of the season, shifts go until 9 or 11 p.m.

Workers without children like the long shifts because they can make extra money, Ramirez said. But those shifts are hard on her because it's more time she has to be away from her daughters, she said.

In the month the girls have gone to the migrant council, Ramirez has noticed them benefiting from the extra attention they receive there, she said. Mariana has gotten instruction on handling eating utensils, and she sings songs and plays with other children, Ramirez said.

"Si, es mejor," Ramirez said, meaning, "Yes, it is best."

They do the same in Miami. Between that, healthcare, foodstamps, welfare and section 8 housing for illegals it has made it very hard for people to buy homes as the property taxes are extremely high in South Florida. When I moved into my condo the first year my tax bill was $863.00 and the year after that my property taxes rose to $2,483.00

Friends, NOTHING is too good for our illegals.

Wait until the demos get into the white house, federal taxes are going sky hight and government spending is going to increase also. More give aways to foreign government and illegals.