Coalition Statement

Oppose the School Readiness Act of 2003
It Repeals Critical Civil Rights Protections for Head Start Teachers and Parent Volunteers

June 17, 2003

Dear Representative:

We, the undersigned religious, civil rights, labor, education, health and advocacy organizations are writing to urge you to oppose the School Readiness Act (H.R. 2210) as voted out of the Subcommittee on Education Reform because it repeals longstanding civil rights protections designed to protect over 50,000 Head Start teachers and over 870,000 parent volunteers from employment discrimination based on religion in federally-funded Head Start programs.

Since 1981, the Head Start program has included this nondiscrimination provision, an important civil rights protection against employment discrimination for Head Start teachers and volunteers. The legislation received strong bipartisan support from both the House and Senate at the time of its passage in the 97th Congress. President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Head Start program, which contains the very same civil rights provision that H.R. 2210 now seeks to repeal as applied to religious organizations. This twenty-two year old provision has worked well since the inception of this program, allowing religious organizations to participate in programs while maintaining Constitutional and civil rights standards.

We recognize that religious organizations participating in the Head Start program make an invaluable contribution to the education of thousands of students. These religious organizations have complied with Head Start's existing civil rights requirements. However, if the repeal of the existing civil rights protection were to become law, teachers or parent volunteers working in any Head Start program run by a religious organization could immediately lose their jobs because of their religion. Students participating in Head Start therefore could lose not only their teachers, but also the close programmatic connection with their own parents volunteering in the program. We strongly believe that allowing discrimination based on religion would significantly impede the important goals of Head Start, send a damaging message to Head Start students that religious pluralism is not valued, and harm their education by separating students from their own teachers and parent volunteers.

We urge you to reject this unjustified assault on civil rights protections in federally-funded job training programs, especially a program such as Head Start, in which the education of younger children is so dependent on parent participation and on ongoing, close relationships with Head Start teachers.

Coalition Statements