National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association

In 1998, the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association (NMSHSA) approached Rapoza Associates for assistance with the Head Start reauthorization legislation. Migrant and Seasonal Head Start was started in 1969 as a direct response to the unique seasonal needs of migrant farm worker families – to ensure that these families and their children can enjoy the same advantages made available to other low income children through Head Start as they move across the country with their families to pursue their work.

Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs are funded along with Indian Head Start, children with disabilities, technical assistance, program review, and research demonstration out of a 13 percent statutory set-aside from the annual Head Start Appropriation. The NMSHSA retained Rapoza Associates to assist them in working with both the Head Start Bureau and Congress to improved Head Start services to migrant and seasonal children and to give a voice to these families in Washington.

Fast-Forward:

Since 1998, Rapoza Associates, working in close partnership with NMSHSA, has succeeded in giving Migrant and Seasonal Head Start a voice in Washington. After eight years we can turn to strong Congressional champions on both sides of the aisle in both the House and the Senate and we can point to concrete advances for MSHS programs. Rapoza Associate's initial research in 1998 showed that MSHS Programs had never received more that 4% of the annual Head Start appropriation despite reports that programs had sustained wait lists and there were portions of the country with significant farmworker populations, both seasonal and migrant, that had no MSHS programs. The need for additional resources was clearly a priority.

In the Head Start Reauthorization Act of 1998 (Coats Human Services Amendments of 1998 P.L. 105-285), Rapoza Associates worked to open the program to children of seasonal farmworkers. While not migratory, seasonal children and their families need the full day, bi-lingual programming that only Migrant Head Start can provide.

In addition, Rapoza Associates saw that statutory language was included in reauthorization bill directing Health and Human Services to report on how migrant and seasonal children who were eligible for Head Start were being served by the program

The HHS report, The Descriptive Study of Seasonal Farmworker Families , is to this date the most comprehensive study done of the MSHS program and its findings have fueled an aggressive legislative campaign to increase funding for MSHS and ensure that more migrant and seasonal children are served. In response to this Congressional directive, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a study in 2001 documenting that only 19 percent of eligible children were able to access Migrant and Seasonal Head Start – as compared to 60 percent of the eligible children that are able to access regional Head Start.

Since then, Rapoza Associates worked with the NMSHSA to craft an ambitious set of priorities including: preserving the Federal nature of the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Program; securing additional funding for MSHS; providing MSHS access to Early Head Start funding; and ensuring that the rural and seasonal nature of MSHS programs are taken into account in developing program and teacher qualification standards.

This effort proved successful in two ways. First the House and the Senate Committees reported bills that paved the way for increased funding for MSHS. For reasons unrelated to MSHS, Head Start Reauthorization legislation stalled in both Houses.

Second, under pressure from Congress, May 10 th , 2005, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that that $35 million in fiscal 2005 Head Start expansion funds would be made available to MSHS grantees to increase the number of migrant children being served. Because of this additional funding, 4,000 additional migrant children will have access to Head Start and, with that, a chance for a better life.