AFT members working in Head Start are helping give kids a boost in those vital early years

The AFT Paraprofessionals and School-Related Personnel (PSRP) division has adopted an informal motto in the last couple of years: “It takes a team.” The idea is that PSRPs play a vital role—whether working directly in the classroom with students or providing essential support services—as part of school and university education teams whose ultimate aim is to provide a high-quality education for every student.

While the motto fits at any level of education, it’s even more appropriate in the area of early childhood. The best preschool programs not only address children’s developing academic needs but they also incorporate social and emotional skills, health and nutrition services, and parental support and education, to name a few. Head Start, the $7 billion-a-year federal program that serves about 900,000 low-
income children, is perhaps the best example of that concept on a broad scale. (At publication time, the U.S. Congress was in the process of reauthorizing the Head Start program. See the box on page 5 for more.)

“There is very much a team approach to working with young children,” says Marci Young, who heads the Center for the Childcare Workforce (CCW), a project of the AFT’s educational foundation. “Everyone who is involved is key to the implementation of a good program.”

When it comes to unions in early childhood, however, the story is very different from K-12 and even higher education. While K-12 teachers are one of the most highly unionized sectors of the workforce, early childhood workers remain largely unorganized. Even in Head Start, with a more centralized bureaucracy and often larger centers, the AFT represents employees in only a few states. (See the box to the right for more on the growing effort by the AFT and its affiliates to organize early childhood workers around the country.)

Those who are under the AFT umbrella have learned the value of having union representation as they undertake jobs that are alarmingly underpaid. The AFT’s newest Head Start local is in Paterson, N.J., where employees in a unit of about 125 voted for union representation earlier this year. Alana Alexander is an assistant teacher at Concerned Parents for Head Start, as the centers in Paterson are called.

“I really feel that the salaries should be better,” says Alexander, whose union is in the process of bargaining its first contract. “We deserve more money for the work we do.” A starting assistant Head Start teacher makes about $10 an hour, about $5 less per hour than a starting teacher.

Teresa McDermott, president of the Paterson Early Childhood Federation of Teachers, points out that experienced assistant teachers such as Alexander can and do fill in for head teachers as necessary, in addition to doing all their other regular duties and often paperwork on top of that.

“We have a very loyal and committed staff,” McDermott says. “They’re certainly not in it for the money, but they should get paid better rather than having to look elsewhere for a better living.”

Alexander already sees the benefit of being in the new union. “I feel that the union can speak for us. That’s a good thing,” she says. Besides the obvious higher pay, Alexander would like to see the contract include some assistance
for tuition expenses and more training
in areas such as stress reduction.

Decent benefits
Because Head Start is largely funded by federal grants, with many different employers, local unions are somewhat limited in their ability to negotiate better salaries. On the positive side, program employees tend to receive benefits that are nearly nonexistent in non-unionized workplaces. In some cases workers’ benefits are even better than their counterparts in the public schools, and in some states they have access to unemployment benefits in the summer.

In Montana, where the AFT represents Head Start employees in a few locations, the challenges are numerous. “It’s almost a moot point in Head Start to try to get more money,” says Peggy Mills, president of the Federation of Tri-County Head Start Employees in Helena. “We have gotten cost-of-living adjustments, but they don’t keep up with the true cost of living.”

From a union perspective, representing a group of low-paid workers—many of them part time—in a number of different sites is demanding to say the least. “Many members don’t really understand what a union is and what it isn’t,” Mills says, adding that high turnover can be an added complication.

Nevertheless, Head Start still manages to attract dedicated employees like Amy Thompson, who works as an education tech—basically the teacher’s assistant and backup in the classroom—at the Early Learning Center in Helena. While Thompson’s hourly wage of $9.50 with benefits is far from generous, it’s competitive in Helena and certainly better than working for Wal-Mart, she says.

“I love the job, I really do,” says Thompson, who is also taking college classes toward an early childhood degree. “I like going to work, and I love working with the kids.” Even after she earns her degree, Thompson wants to continue working with young children, possibly as a Head Start lead teacher.

To give a sense of the small centers in Montana, Thompson’s serves 18 children with four full-time staff. Head Start bus driver Don Rubal, also a member of the Tri-County local, is one of the program’s four drivers and the transportation coordinator. And like Thompson, Rubal relishes the challenge of dealing with 3- to 5-year-olds on a daily basis. “I love the kids. It’s fun to work with them and all the other staff,” he says.

Better prepared children
In addition to Head Start-only affiliates, the AFT includes some larger locals—especially in urban areas—that represent program employees along with other PSRPs or K-12 teachers. One of those locals is the Tacoma (Wash.) Federation of Paraeducators, which includes about 100 Head Start workers among its 630 members. The union contract includes a seven-level pay scale; Head Start lead teachers are the only ones at the top level, so they make more than any of their public school counterparts. In Tacoma, that means a starting salary around $15 per hour, while an entry-level Head Start education assistant earns just under $11.

Local president Barb Randell-Salah worked in Head Start for 25 years before moving to a job in the public schools. Since she also represents K-12 employees, Randell-Salah can vouch for the success of Head Start over the years in preparing students for kindergarten and beyond. The teachers can tell who the Head Start kids are, she says, because they’re ready to learn, they have good social skills, and they can sit and listen better than youngsters who come without any preschool. One problem is that Head Start children, who are among the poorest in their communities, get a full array of health, nutrition and other services in the program, but that tends to stop when they enter the public schools. The local elementary school might have a nurse on site one day a week, if at all.

Head Start’s focus on addressing children’s broad needs, academic and other, is part of what keeps many staff coming back despite the challenges. As Marci Young of the Center for the Childcare Workforce puts it, Head Start is a program where education, health, nutrition and other supports “are interwoven to make sure all the needs of children are met. It really does take a team of employees to make it work.”