Peoria Head Start

By Moriah Balingit

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration said it plans to overhaul Head Start, tossing out many of the regulations that are the hallmark of the early education program for the nation’s poorest children.

Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federally funded preschool program, said the proposed changes would encourage more local decision-making. Early childhood policy experts argue the deregulation could undermine Head Start’s position as the gold standard in early education.

Head Start centers serve around 700,000 of the nation’s most vulnerable children, including those who are homeless, in foster care or disabled. That wouldn’t change under the overhaul.

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By “overhaul” they are talking about taking the student to teacher ratio from 4:1 to as much as 10:1. They want to remove many of the dietary guidelines and overall classroom size limits. Amongst other things.

In about 1995, I was working at the shop on a Sunday afternoon finishing up a project when Pontiac, District 6 State called. The dispatcher asked me if I was open for business. I told her it depended on what type of business it was. She told me that it was a Chrysler mini-van broken down on I74 with 5 occupants. I said sure. She told me that the occupants were negroes. I told her I didn’t care as long as their money was green. She couldn’t vouch for that. I said to bring it in, call Southtown.

About 30 minutes later a less than cherry Chrysler mini-van was dropped off in my drive. It wouldn’t start and had died on the highway. I invited the family into the kitchen area and showed the kids where Frank’s toys were.

It took a bit, but I diagnosed that the fuel pump had failed. Now all I had to do was find a fuel pump at 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon. I found one and coerced Bill Dennis the tow truck driver to go to Bloomington to pick it up.

I pulled the bad pump, and waited for the new one to arrive. I sat down to talk to the man and woman. He was director of the Head Start in Peoria. We talked in length about what he does and the benefits to the kids, all below the poverty level, that Head Start did.

Bill Dennis got back with the new fuel pump; I installed it and fired up the van. The couple let out a whoop when they heard it fire up. I wrote them up a bill, they paid in cash, and they drove off happy. Me and Bill had a cup of coffee and I went back to my project.

Sometime that week, the man with the mini-van called me. “If you’re ever in Peoria, why don’t you come over and see the operation and have dinner with us?” he asked. I said that I’d love to, and we arranged for the next weekend.

That Saturday morning we drove over to Peoria too meet at the center. He was there waiting for us and unlocked the doors. The first thing that hit me was the lack of industrial smell. Every school, nursing home, institution has that chemical smell. Not this one. He showed us around the facility, clearly proud of the place.

After that we went over to their house. It wasn’t opulent, it was modest and looked like a home that housed a family. Over chess we talked about Head Start. I asked him what the one thing that they lacked was, expecting him to say cash. “Cars, we need cheap cars for our parents that don’t have them and need to get to work.” He said. A light bulb went off in my head. I was an Illinois dealer, and we often bought cars for a couple hundred dollars, spent something to repair them, and resold them at a profit. “What if you paid me what I have in a car and the taxes, and you sell it for whatever you see fit? One caveat though, you have to sell it to them, you can’t give it away. If you give it away, they don’t respect it and they’ll trash it.” I said.

“Sounds good to me.” He said. And we shook on it.

We were on about car number eight when I got the call. Someone on his end had complained that he was buying cars from a white guy from Normal and not a local Peoria car dealer that was black. I was floored. Talk about reverse discrimination. Here I was doing something good, trying to help people and getting dinged for my skin color.

“Well, if you can make as good a deal there, I wish you luck.” I told him.

That was the last time we spoke.

ScottL 081126