David L. Kirp will speak at the Region V Leadership and Professional Development Conference for Head Start on Wednesday, November 2nd as part of the general session following lunch.
Kirp, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, is a former newspaper editor and policy consultant as well as an academic. His interests range widely across policy and politics. In his fifteen books and scores of articles in both the popular press and scholarly journals he has tackled some of America’s biggest social problems. His involvement with government agencies and foundations, as well as his teaching and his community activism, address these issues at ground level. Between the 2008 election and the Inauguration, he served on President Obama’s Transition Team. His new book, Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming the Lives of Children (Public Affairs 2011) examines promising policy innovations that span the first generation of children’s lives. Excerpts and opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect and The Nation.
From the beginning of his career, as a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, children’s issues have been his passion. The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics (Harvard 2007) emerged from his spending several years crisscrossing the country, crouching in pre-k classrooms and nurseries across the country and talking with experts in the field.
Those were the final words Tim Crosser, a local father of two, left with U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green, who visited with parents and child care staff at the WSOS Stricker Family Development Center on Wednesday. Crosser served as a member of the Ohio Head Start Association Board in 2009 and 2010.
Crosser, who has a 7-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, said he has been impressed with how well WSOS Head Start program staff work with children and parents to teach behavioral and parenting skills and, ideally, foster development of strong and healthy families.
“Head Start is a family,” he said. “I hope people like Robert Latta remember that when they meet in their committees and start talking budgets.”
Yesterday at the OHSAI Summer Institute “Outcomes, Systems and Executive Function” session, presenter Scott Siegfried shared this video from Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child. It conveys very clearly why we do what we do. Take a look, and consider ways you could use this to help others understand the science of early childhood development.
On August 9th, Congressman Bill Johnson visited one of Lawrence County Early Childhood Academy’s (Head Start/Early Head Start) eleven sites, Ohio University Southern Child Development Center. He met with Head Start program managers, parent Sarah Wilson, Barbara Haxton, Executive Director of the Ohio Head Start Association, and D.R. Gossett, Executive Director of the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action. The parent delivered a powerful message about how her child has benefited from the Early Head Start program and about the significant impact Early Head Start has made on her son’s developmental progress. The Congressman expressed a deep interest in and support for the program and shared that he knows Head Start is a viable and needed program. He further indicated that he understands the significance of maintaining the funding for Head Start and Early Head Start programs is for the future of our most vulnerable children.
OHSAI is a non-profit, 501(c)4 organization. We greatly value the contributions our supporters provide us and donated funds are used to support our state and federal advocacy efforts on behalf of at risk children and their families. On behalf of those children and their families, we make many visits each year to visit members of our state legislature and members of our Congressional delegation. Help to defray those costs is always welcome. Please make checks payable to the Ohio Head Start Association and send to 144 Westpark Road, Dayton OH 45459. We deeply appreciate your support.
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David L. Kirp will speak at the Region V Leadership and Professional Development Conference for Head Start on Wednesday, November 2nd as part of the general session following lunch.
