{"id":33745,"date":"2013-12-05T11:10:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T17:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=33745"},"modified":"2013-12-06T15:02:32","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T21:02:32","slug":"sen-heitkamp-visits-v-c-head-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=33745","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Heitkamp At V.C. Head Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SenatorHeitkampofficial\"<\/a>Valley City (CSi) \u2013 U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp Thursday visited a Head Start facility in Valley City, to see firsthand the devastating impact of across-the-board spending cuts on programs that offer affordable early education for low-income families.<\/p>\n

Since the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts \u2013 known as sequestration \u2013 began earlier this year, the Valley City Head Start facility has been forced to cut 17 children from the program, reduce classroom sizes, and combine employees\u2019 positions. Heitkamp is determined to reduce federal spending and address our Federal budget deficit, but she is opposed to blind cuts that disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable, like the children who participate in the proven Head Start Program.<\/p>\n

\u3000<\/p>\n

Sen. Heitkamp says “Visiting the Valley City Head Start facility, and seeing these preschoolers engaged and learning only reinforces that early childhood education is crucial to make sure all of our children have every opportunity to succeed. And Head Start offers those opportunities to North Dakota children whose parents might not otherwise be able to afford early education. However, we are causing real damage by not investing in Head Start and instead implementing reckless across-the-board spending cuts that are taking these programs away from our kids and also seriously hurting families. We\u2019re seeing the direct impacts here at Valley City Head Start where kids have been shut out of the program because of harsh funding cuts. I\u2019m committed to reducing Federal spending, but not at our children\u2019s expense. We need to support our kids, and help them learn and grow \u2013 and in the long run, it actually saves taxpayer money.”<\/p>\n

Last month, Heitkamp called on Senators and Members who are working to negotiate a plan to move forward with a long-term budget, to spare proven programs like Head Start from additional cuts. Heitkamp and several fellow Senators pointed out that for every $1 invested in high-quality early childhood education, taxpayers save an average of $7 in future costs.<\/p>\n

Automatic across-the-board spending cuts went into effect earlier this year and were signed into law before Heitkamp came into office. According to the National Head Start Association, these cuts slashed nearly $405 million to Head Start, resulting in 57,265 fewer children participating, including nearly 200 in North Dakota. Additionally, students who can still attend will have about 80 fewer days of participation. And the National Indian Education Association estimates that Indian Head Start will lose about $12 million from these harsh cuts.<\/p>\n

Also Thursday, Heitkamp read to Fargo Pre-K students who are participating in North Dakota Reading Corps.<\/p>\n

Today, Sen. Heitkamp will be in Jamestown, at 11:45 a.m. serving lunch at the Jamestown River Community Center, at Legacy Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valley City (CSi) \u2013 U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp Thursday visited a Head Start facility in Valley City, to see firsthand the devastating impact of across-the-board spending cuts on programs that offer affordable early education for low-income families. Since the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts \u2013 known as sequestration \u2013 began earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33745"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33749,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745\/revisions\/33749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}