Leaders of the Mission Neighborhood Centers, Inc. (MNC) proudly announced the organization’s acceptance of a five-year Head Start and Early Head Start Grantee contract at a June 4 press conference attended by community members, parents and the media.
The new contract, awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families and Office of Head Start, will allocate a grant of more than $4 million to MNC, and will enable the nonprofit organization to expand its day care and nutrition services for low-income families.
“There are institutions in the city that make government work, because they’re close to the ground and really … reach families in a way that public institutions aren’t able to; this organization is one of those very-important-to-the-city institutions,” said Michele Rutherford, deputy director of the Office of Early Care and Education. “It’s been an amazing process of watching MNC over the years … struggle with being under the big house of Head Start as grantees would turn over. They were trying to stand their ground–and now are a direct grantee.”
Prior to the grant, MNC had worked to ensure school readiness and capacitate families of over 368 children at 10 Head Start centers throughout San Francisco. The new contract will, for the first time, expand these services to 48 infants and toddlers.
The organization, which is approaching its 55th anniversary in September, has a 40-year history of working in partnership with Head Start, a national program that serves underprivileged families by supporting the mental, cognitive and emotional development of school-bound children–and will now be given the authority to appeal directly to the federal agency rather than negotiating with middlemen.
“It feels like we have been emancipated,” said MNC Executive Director Santiago Ruiz. “We are now in a stage, in a phase of our evolution, where we can access more readily the support, resources, technical assistance … to meet our goal and objective of school readiness [for children] with much more ease. We now have direct access to a federal program versus having to go through a broker.”
According to Ruiz, the grant, along with funding from the State Department of Education, will enable MNC to provide a “continuum of care” to its enrolled children and their families–a full day program from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., year-round.
“The reality is that what most of our parents need is full-day support,” said Ruiz. “All studies indicate that students who participate in Head Start are more likely not only to graduate from high school, but to enter college and graduate from college. That’s why we consider it as a fundamental piece of the quilt we need to put together so that families can prosper.”
At the conference, parents testified to the program’s success.
“To see the hard work that the teachers do every day … and to see [my daughter] come home and know a second language excites me,” said Lemonia Thomas, whose daughter is enrolled at MNC and is avidly learning Spanish. “I’m really happy that my daughter is part of this program.”
MNC is praised for its bilingual education program, which along with its mission of providing resources to families in need, is critical in bridging the educational gap in a time when many low-income and working class families are being uprooted and displaced.
“We are really working towards ensuring that we are keeping at the forefront [of] the war on poverty,” said Dolores Terrazas, MNC Children Services Division director. “We work with families to ensure that they have the skill set and resources to move on to the unified school system–and we help children to have that self-worth of being able to be successful.”