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As we know, parent/family engagement is one of the most important and longest-lasting benefits of Head Start. To do it right, it requires an all-hands-on-deck mentality. Every interaction with a parent or caregiver, no matter how small or fleeting it may seem, should be considered when putting together the best plan for family engagement. After…

Head Start at the national level does not have any explicit rules regarding the vaccination status of children who attend local programs (a bill proposed in 2015 would’ve required all Head Start children to be vaccinated, but never made it to a vote). As it stands now, it is only mentioned once in the Head…

I’m sure you’ve let it slip once or twice. An acronym that you use every day in your work as a Head Start staff person, only to experience a deer-in-the-headlights look when you use it in conversations with parents. Federally-funded programs have a title and term for everything. Every framework, initiative, program, tactic, and strategy…

As Mother’s Day approaches we at The Gravely Group asked Mr. Gravely about his experience growing up. Even until 2014, Mr. Gravely’s mother was living and a very important part of his life. This week he pays homage to his mother and all the things she taught him… “So many children grow up without the…

This may be one of the most difficult topics I’ve ever had to write about. No one wants to think about a scenario in which our country’s most vulnerable, our children, might be the targets of intentional violence. This week, another act of school violence made headlines, just seven miles from Columbine, Co, in which…

I have a special place in my heart for foster children, having been a foster parent myself for many years. Foster children can often feel like the world has forgotten them, as the many adults around them are busy navigating the complex bureaucratic web that is the foster care system. While we all mean well,…

In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. In 2018, California experienced the deadliest wildfires in its history. Just this month, portions of the Midwest suffered some of the worst flooding in living memory. When faced with the fallout from natural disasters, it’s the community-based institutions that serve the local residents everyday who are in the…

We received an email from the ECLKC a couple weeks ago, which promoted their February vlog titled “Home is Where the Love Is: Homelessness, Children and Families.” In that vlog, Dr. Deborah Bergeron, the Director of Head Start, visits the iconic Sesame Street studios to talk to Kama Einhorn, creator of Lily, a muppet character…

We recently received a great newsletter from the National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement from their “Fatherhood Connection” initiative, in which they provided a year in review of the many strategies they talked about in 2018 to engage fathers in Head Start programs. The way we see it, it’s never a bad time…

The New York Times recently published a story called “Cleaner Classrooms and Rising Scores: With Tighter Oversight, Head Start Shows Gains,” in which it reports that Head Start has seen gains in program quality across the board “more than a decade after Congress imposed new standards” that required “a third of its partners… to compete…