Sequestration hits York County Head Start program

(York) — Federal spending cuts mean more than 40 York County children will be left out of an early childhood education program.

Sequestration slashed $250,000 from the York County Head Start program designed to help preschoolers in low-income families.

Director Sue Yohe says Congress has a chance to increase funding for Head Start programs nationwide when they take up the federal budget this fall.

“They need to decide what’s important, what their priorities are in terms of what they want to do for the country,” Yohe says. “Children should be their priority because what happens to them the first five years of life is going to have a significant impact on what happens to them later in life and research proves that.”

Yohe says the program can no longer support 44 children in its home-based initiative, where teachers would visit families and work with learning and child care practices.

She says York’s Head Start and its Early Head Start for infants and toddlers have a combined waiting list of about 900 families.

Roughly 590 families are currently served by the program that’s funded with a combination of federal and state money.