Florida Head Start grateful to philanthropists

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The Florida Head Start Association and families who use the programs are very grateful for the $10 million donation made to the National Head Start Association by John and Laura Arnold, enabling Head Start locations to reopen.

Florida’s Head Start programs were hit hard by the government shutdown. Within the first few days, over 370 children were affected when their Head Start location closed.

Capital Area Community Action Agency (CACAA) in the Tallahassee area serves three counties and was forced to close their nine Head Start locations last Tuesday. The agencies’s pre-K programs offer children two meals and a snack every day, as well as medical care, dental care and physical therapy for students with disabilities.

Lilli Copp of the Florida Head Start State Collaboration Office told theGrio Tuesday that “with the generous assistance from the Arnolds, [CACAA] reopened their classrooms today!”

“We are very excited to be back open,” CACAA executive director Tim Center told theGrio today. “I think a parent on our Facebook said it best: ‘Praise Jesus.'”

“The generosity of the Arnold family is incredible and overwhelming,” Center said. “We are very fortunate.”

Center said the past week has been a very stressful time for families who rely on their services. “Parents were scrambling to find alternatives,” he said.

Mother of four Sharece Smith said the past week has been hard, especially on her four-year-old daughter who attends one of CACAA’s Head Start programs. “This would have been her first year going to school and for them to be out the whole week, it kinda start[s] her back,” Smith said.

While she is happy Heard Start has re-opened, Smith says she is still nervous that it may have to close again due to the government.

“[The closing] was an inconvenience because I had to scramble at the last minute to find someone to keep my four-year-old,” Tallahassee mother Antonette Farmer told theGrio. “It was hard because a couple of days I couldn’t work because I couldn’t find a sitter. It was at the spur of the moment. It wasn’t like we were warned in advance. ”

Farmer, who works 2 jobs, said the Head Start program in Long Grove offers much-needed assistance, and she is thankful they were able to reopen their doors.

“I think that’s an awesome thing to do, and I’ve looked at it as an angel, someone, a group of people who are looking out for the kids’ sake,” Farmer said about the donation made to Head Start by the Arnolds. “I just think it’s a blessing from God that someone stepped in and donated their own hardworking money to a center and to kids that they don’t even know.”

Copp is grateful centers have been reopened, but she does warn that if the government shutdown continues through the end of October, four more Florida Head Start agencies servicing approximately 9,000 children will run out of local funding and possibly face closure.

Follow Carrie Healey on Twitter @CarrieHeals.