When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty in 1964, Head Start was put in place to support children being left behind. As such, the program has since provided preschool education to thousands of children and likely more each year. On the NYC Administration for Children's Services website, Head Start is described as an agency able to help families with housing assistance as well as work with children with disabilities. Yet, one mother tells her son's negative experience with Head Start staff.
Her son was identified as a preschool student with disabilities and in September 2013, she enrolled her son into East Harlem Bilingual Head Start. Once the staff learned of his disability, the school immediately told the mother the staff was not properly trained to deal with children who had disabilities since there were no special education teachers on staff. The child was given a Special Education Itinerant Teacher (SEIT) to be with him in classes. The school was not satisfied with 3 hours per day of SIET with the child. The mother volunteered to spend time in the classroom to help the teachers understand her son a bit more and to offer suggestions on working with him.
What the mother noticed is lack of proper supervision in the classrooms, maltreatment of her son, and unprofessional behavior from staff. She reports seeing teachers gossiping outside of the classrooms while the children sat either doing nothing or the children sitting at the table waiting for 10 minutes sometimes for the next activity.
While working with the child one day, the SIET mentioned to the mother that a staff member out loud said "I hope he gets some help and soon because he needs it". The SIET has no doubt the child heard the comment. The mother began to snoop a bit more and noticed a substitute teacher snatching items from the child when she peeked into the classroom. The regular teacher was apparently at a meeting.
When the child's mother spoke to the assistant director, the assistant director said that she should have been notified sooner and that they would do what they could to keep it from happening again. For the next month, the child's mother often spoke with the assistant director about issues she noticed and was told the concerns would be addressed.
The child's mother began to receive more and more phone calls from staff saying the child needed to be picked up because he was having a hard day, was not in the mood to be in school, and they were not able to work with him. The calls became more frequent and occurred on consecutive days. Out of frustration the mother told the staff she did not feel the school was working with her child but was pushing him out. She further expressed that she would not return her son to the school until her concerns were addressed.
A week later, after numerous phone calls, the child's mother received a letter stating her son was dis-enrolled. When she sought answers, she was told they were too busy. The mother was pretty upset since she was juggling school and was in the middle of midterms and finals while dealing with their demanding, unprofessionalism.
She feels that her son was pushed out of Head Start. How does a single mother with little means, attending college and caring for a child with special needs (whether obvious or not) deal with this? Who can she turn to for answers. She made a complaint with the Office of Head Start located in Washington, DC. but has not heard anything back. She had a final conversation with the director of East Harlem Bilingual Head Start and was told the it was her fault for not saying anything sooner. She was blamed for not "speaking up". Perhaps the director didn't know she had been requesting a meeting for weeks.
I think there needs to be more regulation on what goes on in the program. Why are the teachers not supervised to prevent maltreatment of the children? Should they be allowed to snatch items from the children? They definitely shouldn't be grabbing a 4 year old's arm as done with this child. Any thoughts on what can be done with this story?
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