Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511170119
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH STROTHER/
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Forget it.
Her husband and two of their children were waiting in the car outside. She had to drop him at work by noon, then take the kids to her mother's house and get to work herself by 2. She smiled brightly. Would the interview take long?
People working their way out of poverty don't "do lunch."
Mitzi is the young woman who organized a news conference the other day to protest changes in the state's administration of Head Start's "wrap-around" day care. This program cares for kids during the critical hours before and after preschool, allowing parents who are struggling to get off or stay off welfare to work or go to school. Families with incomes below the poverty line have been able to use the service without charge.
That, the state of Virginia told Head Start parents, was going to change. Abruptly. Starting the next week, every family would have to pay 10 percent of its income - gross - for day care. "For families below the poverty level, that is a great deal. We don't have money laying around," Mitzi told me.
"I wanted to know who decided this and what did they know about us and our families? I was insulted."
It is hard to imagine a less likely adversary for the welfare-reform-minded Allen administration.
Just 21 now, Mitzi was 16 when she dropped out of high school and married. She was pregnant. She and her husband, Samuel, had custody of his son. "We were young and in love. You know, you feel like you can conquer the world."
But, she admits, she didn't have a very high opinion of herself when she decided to leave school. She has always had goals, she said. "I always wanted to be a teacher. But when I dropped out, I felt I would never go away to a four-year college and do that. I felt like that was gone."
Samuel was 19, a Fleming graduate. She got her high-school equivalency through Total Action Against Poverty in three months, and was valedictorian of her class. Both of them enrolled at Virginia Western. But with two children and no car, it was too tough. They got around on the bus, and when classes ended late, relied on rides from a friend or, when that failed, from their pastor at Glorious Church of God in Christ. (``We're very religious," she had said when I first asked her to tell me about herself and her family. "That's been our basis. And we're very hard workers.")
They quit college, had another child. She was working part time as a telemarketer, he full time in the kitchen at Lewis-Gale Hospital.
Their older son and then their daughter attended a part-day Head Start. There, Mitzi got involved in its Parent Policy Council where, to her amazement, she saw other parents having a say over how the program operated.
Over time, the family's situation became more stable - they got a car, for one thing. Mitzi had been offered another job and needed full-day services. She sent her daughter to Head Start's Campbell Avenue center, and got on the policy council there. "Most parents at Campbell are working parents. It's wonderful to share experiences with people who share your concerns, positive people," she said. "Everybody's into their child's education."
In part because Head Start parents are accustomed to sharing decision-making, the state's dictate - unexpected and unexplained - didn't go down well.
The Cottons have a fourth child now, who will be 2 in January. Despite the growing family, they feel they're on the verge of breaking the poverty barrier. "We're at the point where we see the other side. We see that we can make it. The day-care situation, that was at a real critical point for our family."
Samuel had landed a full-time job as a custodian at First Baptist Church. "They understand the family. They understand what it takes being a parent. They always supported us in everything we did. I admired them so much," Mitzi said, "because they had benefits for the family. For the first time, we have health insurance." When she applied for, and got, a job at the church's child-development center, "I felt like I was home."
She hadn't cared much for her business classes at Virginia Western. Her first job working directly with children revived once-discarded ambitions of teaching. "It was such satisfying work, I wanted to get my degree because I wanted to be a lead teacher." She re-enrolled at Virginia Western, in the associate-degree program in early-childhood development.
Their jobs at First Baptist have done more than anything else to change the family's prospects, she says - and she credits Head Start with getting her and her husband that far: its philosophy of parental empowerment (helping her to realize she can be effective); parental involvement (``My husband ... will go down to the center and eat lunch with them. He does more with our son who is in elementary school"); parental training (``I had become certified in volunteering in the classroom at Head Start." That helped her get the job that she loves).
The state so far is sticking to its plans to charge all families, no matter how poor, 10 percent of their gross income for day care, but it has decided to wait until January to begin. Mitzi is still trying to organize Head Start families statewide to fight to keep the service free for families below the poverty line.
She speaks with the passion of an upwardly mobile PTA mom working furiously to get the best equipment in her kid's classroom.
by CNB