Our Children Deserve the Best

On Thursday, April 19, the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, announced that they are releasing funding opportunities for 97 Head Start service areas across the country.

HHS has implemented new regulations and criteria to ensure that programs are providing the highest quality services to children and families by mandating that Head Start grantees that fail to meet rigorous quality benchmarks compete for continued federal funding.

Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, director of the Office of Head Start, said the first goal of Head Start is to “put our nation’s low-income children on a road to school readiness. We’re keeping our commitment to America’s children and holding programs accountable for their services. Our children deserve the best early education services today in order to be the leaders of tomorrow.”

The funding opportunity announcements will be released in two groups. Grantees were placed into each group based on the month their program year funding begins. This process will allow for planning transitions at natural breaks in services, minimizing disruptions to children, families and staff. Funding opportunity announcements for the first group of service areas are currently open to all eligible organizations available and applicants have 90 days to submit their Head Start grant proposals online through www.Grants.gov.  An additional 100 funding opportunity announcements for the second group will be available in May.

This is a great opportunity for organizations that target our Hispanic communities to apply and compete for this available funding in order to make a greater impact in the lives of our Hispanic children and families.

For more information on the Office of Head Start visit http://transition.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ohs or log onto Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center at http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc.  HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at  http://www.hhs.gov/news.