A change in leadership is on the horizon for the Birth-to-Five Head Start program in Nueces County.
The Nueces County Community Action Agency, which has operated the program since 1965, did not receive the expected federal grant for next year. Instead, a nonprofit headquartered in Austin called Upbring will take over in January.
Katie Nickas, who covered this story for the Corpus Christi Caller Times, said this program serves anywhere up to 1,000 kids in the Corpus Christi area.
“The Head Start program is a federally funded program that’s been offering services in the area since 1965,” she said. “Locally, it’s been through the Nueces County Community Action Agency that runs the Birth-to-Five Head Start program geared towards young children from low income families primarily.
It’s kind of a concurrent enrollment program for the children and their parents to obtain child care services and also education. And it’s funded through the Federal Administration for Children and Families through the Office of Head Start. This program has been serving quite a few children here in Nueces County, bringing those children in through the Head Start and Early Head Start programs.”
While it was not entirely clear why the Nueces County Community Action Agency was denied funding this year, Nickas said there were some investigations into the agency that may have played a role.
And Upbring has some experience running Head Start programs outside of Austin already, Nickas said.
“They are based in Austin and they have a network of offices in multiple cities around Texas,” she said. “They are a newer organization, as I understand it. And I don’t know the details of why they just have taken over the Head Start program.
They will be getting the grant, but I’m not sure if it’s because of a new service that they’re offering or location-based or a new idea or program model that they proposed. It was just announced here that the program would be shifting after all those years from a Corpus Christi-based organization to an Austin organization.”
It is unclear what changes, if any, might come to the program under new leadership. Nickas said staff have expressed concerns over their jobs and some residents worry about the future of the program.
“Hopefully (this transition) is going to mean that the organizations that the Community Action Agency has partnered with in the past can continue to collaborate. And that Upbring will ensure that they are overseeing the program with respect to how it’s been managed all these years with it being so rooted in a community,” Nickas said.
“I think people get very nervous when something like this happens, when there’s so many millions of dollars involved. And for that reason, I know that Upbring has hosted a couple of meetings for staff and a parent town hall. That created quite an uproar, as I understand it. Naturally, that would be the response, I would think, with this kind of shift and in services. I will be following up to find out more about what this transition will mean to the community.”
