Starting Out Strong : Head Start: Supporters say the preschool program offers poor children key social and learning skills. They hope that Congress OKs additional funding.

Durrell Archer just turned 4 but he already knows what he wants to be when he grows up. Like many of his Head Start classmates, he wants to be a firefighter--the lingering influence of a recent field trip to a fire station.

Durrell is one of 856 preschoolers enrolled in Ventura County’s Head Start program, an effort to help disadvantaged children by teaching them social skills and preparing them for kindergarten.

The nationwide program has received sustained applause since its inception in 1965, with study after study showing that every dollar spent on Head Start to help children get a good education can save $5 in government spending on remedial education and other social service costs.

“If the children are denied the opportunity to develop mentally, physically and socially, it carries through their entire life,” said Juanita L. Sanchez-Valdez, advocacy committee chairwoman of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura. “It would certainly be better than paying $30,000 per year later on to house them in youth detention facilities.”

Despite broad support, Head Start has never received federal funding in proportion to its social value, supporters say. In Ventura County, for example, more than 200 children are waiting for the first available opening at one of the county’s 16 Head Start centers.

And program experts estimate that 3,000 additional children in Ventura County are eligible for the program. But most of their parents are unaware of Head Start and, even if they did know about it, there is no money to bring the children into the program.

For the youngsters on the waiting list, President Bush offered a glimmer of hope by proposing to inject another $600 million into Head Start. If Bush’s proposed funding increase is adopted by Congress, possibly as soon as this summer, about $400,000 would trickle down to Ventura County, officials said.

That would give Child Development Resources of Ventura County Inc., the county’s principal Head Start administrator, the financial ability to give more poor youngsters an early chance to break out of the cycle of poverty, Executive Director Alicia Lewis said.

Lewis said about 50% of the money would be used to immediately enroll another 60 children in the program. The other half would allow Child Development Resources to upgrade equipment at its Head Start sites and hire more staff, she said.

The county has one other Head Start administrator, Target Area Program Child Development Inc., which operates a site for 38 children in Santa Paula. It is one of that group’s six sites in Kern, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties for 324 children of migrant workers, said Arlene Jones, program coordinator.

Jones said the Bakersfield-based agency specializes in the special needs of the workers’ children, who have difficulty taking advantage of the program because of their transient lifestyles. For example, she said, Head Start classes begin at 6 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. to match the long workdays of the parents.

If the President’s proposal becomes reality, Jones said her agency plans to open another two or three sites to help children of Ventura County’s 20,000 migrant workers.

Most of the Head Start sites in the county are in churches, and increasing numbers are finding their way onto high school campuses, Lewis said.

The La Colonia site, at Rose Avenue and Colonia Road, operates two morning and two afternoon classes, each with about 15 children. In the 3 1/2 hours a day that the youngsters are in class, they spend less time on academics than on developing motor and social skills, such as getting along with others, sharing and following rules.

And in teaching these skills, the curriculum emphasizes instruction in English and Spanish, La Colonia teacher Jackie Rios said. Head Start’s curriculum titled “ Amanecer ,” Spanish for beginning of a new day, reflects the program’s bilingual philosophy, she said.

“But its flexibility lets us incorporate the full ethnic spectrum into classroom activities.”

Durrell’s interest in firefighting was ignited during a field trip to Oxnard Fire Depot No. 5--across the street from the Head Start site in La Colonia that he attends. The trip was part of the month’s “Community Helpers” theme, geared to help preschoolers become familiar with the various public services in the community, such as the library, police and post office, Rios said.

The trip gave Durrell and his classmates a close-up look at the world of a firefighter.

Playing the role of a sleeping firefighter awakened by a middle-of-the-night emergency call, Durrell sprang to his feet as the piercing shrill of sirens drowned the group’s giggles. The 15 children, crowded into firefighter Terry Mikelos’ sleeping quarters, burst into laughter again as Durrell peeked out from under a firefighter’s helmet and 20 pounds of fire-resistant clothing.

“Often, the children don’t get exposed to different people outside their home,” Rios said. For example, she said, “many only associate the police with trouble.”

Durrell is the youngest of 20 grandchildren of Sophia Polk. Since beginning Head Start, she said, “he seems very interested in school. He’s learned to play with other children and is spelling real well.”

Head Start does a lot more than help poor youngsters become socially balanced. It provides dental care, inoculations and health checkups for its students. Head Start also offers parents educational opportunities to prepare for college and take college courses.

Parents are asked to volunteer for an average of eight hours a month in the classes. Administrators say such parental involvement promotes quality time with the children as well as exposes the parents to classroom activities.

Margaret Ramirez, the mother of four children who have gone through the program, said she enjoyed working with the children so much that she jumped at the chance to become a classroom aide when a spot opened up at the Simi-Moorpark site.

Now Ramirez is taking classes at Moorpark College to become a teacher under the auspices of Head Start’s child development associate program. “Now that I’m going to school, I can see a lot of avenues,” said Ramirez, a housewife for more than 18 years.

Ramirez said she learned about Head Start through a flyer at the social services office. “The thing that I noticed most about my children was the dramatic degree of change in their maturity and social skills,” she said. “Nowadays, children have to be as socially and academically mature as first-graders by the time they get to kindergarten.”

Head Start is mandated to serve both 3- and 4-year-olds, but because of funding limitations, it focuses primarily on 4-year-olds, a spokesman at the state Department of Health and Human Services said.

Lewis said that usually a child must be 4 to be placed on a waiting list. Unfortunately, she said, this means that many preschoolers outgrow the program before they have a chance to get in.

“Given the reality of the potential fallout, not only for Ventura but for the state, it behooves us to make sure that the youth are better prepared to cope with their environment,” El Concilio’s Sanchez-Valdez said. “It would pay great dividends if each preschooler who needed it was touched by Head Start.”