Head Start is coming to the Oregon State University-Cascades campus. On September 8, it’ll take over three of six classrooms in the 7,200-square-foot building that formerly housed the university’s Little Kits Early Care & Education Center, which abruptly closed its doors in July, citing “ongoing financial challenges.”
Head Start is a federal program that provides an umbrella of services for low-income families and children. The Head Start program at the OSU-Cascades building, located near the intersection of SW Chandler Ave. and Mt. Washington Drive, will serve approximately 33 children, with two classrooms for children ages 0-2 and one classroom for children ages 3-5.
“It’s a work in progress, and while I’m very excited that we are able to do this for our little portion of the world between Head Start and OSU-Cascades. I don’t want to forget about all those struggling families out there who are trying really hard to find extra slots and to find affordable slots,” said Scott Cooper, executive director of NeighborImpact, which runs the HeadStart program that serves more than 600 children in Deschutes County. “To make this work, I think that it’s going to take all of us as a community of both higher education and service providers and the private sector figuring out a way to solve this unsolvable problem, because if we’re going to have the workforce that we want in our community, if we’re going to give people that opportunity to reach their full fulfillment, we have got to have reasonable, affordable, accessible childcare options. It is a utility that we do not have in this region at the moment.”…