Wendy Cave - Observing and Interacting with Families of the Children in Your Setting

This past week, I have had the opportunity to meet and talk with some parents of the PreK Program where I have been observing and working in. The program had their monthly parent meeting and I was invited to come and speak with them about their child's PreK experience. There were four families in attendance and I was able to ask them questions such as:

1. Please share with me and positive or negative experiences that you may have had while in the program.
2. Do you feel that your child and family benefited from the program and how?
3. What options would or do you have it this PreK classroom was not available for your child and your family?

I then shared with them some of the budget concerns and what that could mean to many programs in the area as well as the community as a whole. Most of the parents shared that they chose this program because they wanted an educational program for their child and did not want their child just sitting at a babysitters watching television or playing video games. One parent actually shared that if she did not have this program, she would have to quit working to stay home with her child because her family could not afford to pay for all day child care.

When we were done with the meeting, I suggested that they could help by calling their local Representatives in Congress to share their stories and how this funding cut would impact them as a family as well as the community. I also shared that they should continue to work with their child's school to make sure that they are satisfied with the services provided and that even in elementary school, they should keep the communication lines open with the teacher and the administration staff to make sure that their child gets the education they deserve.

Observing and INteracting with Progra Wendy Cave - Observing and Interacting with Program Directors and Other Administrative Staff in Your Setting

I have been meeting with school district superintendents to discuss the children that will be transitioning to their school in the fall. While meeting with them I have been talking about the federal budget cuts and how it has been impacting our program. They have shared that they have experienced cuts as well and have had to look into outside grants as well as cut programming in order to meet their budgets. The one district talked about how they had to start charging students and their parents if the students wanted to be involved in their football program. They have had fundraisers but still had to start charging families that wanted to be part of this extra curricular activity.

Another school district shared that they actually cut some of the curriculum choices for the students in middle school and high school because they had to furlough teachers to help with the cuts. Now obviously they did not cut the essential content areas but they did cut shop and home economics. I think that this is a sad option because those classes are helpful to students that want to gain skills that will help them in their lives even though it related to college requirements.

I shared this information with our director of our Head Start program and she had me sit in on a committee where our role was to help decide on how we were going to cut programming in order to meet our budget. We did this as a preliminary stage so that she could met with her governing board to discuss with them the options and then she will share what they approved the program doing.

Budgets are something that many people do not think of unless you are the person writing the checks. This was a great insight for me to take part in this decision making process.