The House Appropriations Committee this week set the maximum funding level for the labor, health and human services subcategory of 2012 Federal discretionary spending, and the National Head Start Association is not happy.
NHSA Executive Director Yasmina Vinci responded by calling proposed cuts akin to placing the nation’s budget deficit woes “directly on the backs of children.” The appropriations committee recommended that Head Start and Early Head Start be cut next year by $18 billion from current levels, or nearly half the original $41 billion discretionary spending proposal by the Obama Administration.
The proposed $18 billion in Head Start cuts are the largest for any subcategory.
“With every dollar invested in a child in Head Start yielding a 7 [percent] to 10 percent return each year for the entire life of that child, maintaining full Head Start funding is a smart, long-term investment that policy makers would be foolish to ignore,” she added.
In April, Head Start was spared additional cuts after President Obama signed legislation to end budget debates in Congress. Head Start will continue to be funded to the tune of $7.5 billion for the remainder of the summer.
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Aloha means good-bye and hello, and school bus transporters in Hawaii could be soon using both meanings of the word. A movement is afoot to petition Gov. Neil Ambercrombie to move school busing from the Department of Education back to the Department of Transportation. The DOE previously announced that mainstream school busing would be going away on the island of Oahu next school year.
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To date, officials at Starcraft Bus have been mum about how the Japan tsunami in March is affecting chassis production at Hino Truck. Starcraft and Hino are partnering on the latest Type C conventional school bus make and model that was originally expected to hit the market by the end of this year. Meanwhile, according to a news report from West Virginia, where the J-338 Hino chassis will be manufactured before heading to Goshen, Ind., for final school bus body assembly, production has been reduced by 30 percent.
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On the heels of a legislation passed in Washington state this spring, Iowa could soon introduce a bill that would call for school bus stop arm cameras to catch illegal passers, following the death of 7-year-old girl who was struck and killed in the loading zone.
