Key union negotiation team member and worker activist Luz Barron says that a healing process needs to begin but first workers and parents need protection. “Its about dignity and respect.�

SEIU Local 415 Executive Director Cliff Tillman says that the Bush Administration has done everything it can to weaken or destroy Head Start. “The Local Head Start Agency’s arrogant and hypocritical actions only play into the Administration’s hands.�

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program founded in 1965 as part of President Johnson’s “War On Poverty� and Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision for civil rights. Federal regulations require that the program take a democratic approach to education with elected parents in leadership roles planning, making policy and “sharing decisions,� participating directly in their children’s pre-school education.