Service Area
The Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) provided services through contractual delegate agreements with Four agencies in Illinois, serving the entire state and three counties of Indiana. The delegate agencies providing services July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023 were:
- Del Valle Migrant Head Start, in Oswego
- Rainbow Learning, in Kankakee and Sheldon
- Princeville CUSD #326, in Princeville
- Migrant Education, in Cobden
Funding
The Head Start program was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Head Start, and supported by the Illinois Department of Human Services Division of Family and Community Services and by Illinois General Revenue through the Bureau of Quality Initiatives. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reimburses meal costs through the Child and Adult Care Food Program, administered by the Illinois State Board of Education.
| Funding Source |
Amount |
Percent of Total Budget |
| HHS/ACF/OHS |
$3,716,300 |
82% |
| Illinois General Revenue |
$739,329 |
16% |
| USDA |
$103,984 |
2% |
Budget Information
Ninety-eight percent of the total federal budget was allocated to delegate program operations, under the line item 6.f. contractual. Non-federal share was raised through General Revenue and private donations of goods, and services to delegate agencies.
| Line Item |
Proposed Budget |
Expenditures |
Percentage Spent |
| Salaries |
$0.00 |
|
0.00% |
| Fringe Benefits |
$0.00 |
|
0.00% |
| Travel |
$21,751.00 |
$7,886.80 |
36.26% |
| Equipment |
$0.00 |
|
0.00% |
| Supplies |
$0.00 |
|
0.00% |
| Contractual Delegates |
$3,639,345.00 |
$3,638,307.13 |
99.97% |
| Other contractual |
$55,204.00 |
$50,008.07 |
90.59% |
| Total |
$3,716,300.00 |
$3,696,202.00 |
99.46% |
| Funding Source |
Match Proposed on Budget |
Actual Collected |
Match Percentage |
| Grantee IDHS |
$482,201.00 |
$601,881.41 |
124.82% |
| 3rd Party Contractual Delegates |
$213,743.00 |
$152,392.00 |
71.30% |
| Total |
$695,944.00 |
$754,273.41 |
108.38% |
Enrollment
Families eligible for MSHS must earn 51% or more of their income from employment in agriculture and must be doing agricultural work at the time of enrollment, or shortly thereafter. Families must verify that their primary income is from agricultural labor. Illinois Migrant & Seasonal Head Start defines "agricultural labor" to include: fruit & vegetables, mushroom growing, flower farming, plant or tree nurseries, greenhouses, forestry, orchards, sod farming, grain/corn storage facilities, stock, dairy, poultry, livestock, fish, fur-farming; employment connected to fruit, vegetables, and grains packaging and canning, cultivating the soil, raising, detasseling and harvesting any agricultural or horticultural commodity, orchards, dairying, bees/apiaries; including the raising, shearing, feeding, processing, training, and caring for livestock; swine, sheep, beef cattle, ponies, or horses, and poultry, fish, and fur-bearing animals and wildlife. Not eligible are landscaping and grounds-keeping.
Parents must furnish, as proof of annual income, one of the following: Income Tax Form 1040 or 1040A, W-2 forms from every source of income, pay stubs with year-to-date total, or written statements from employers. Homeless families who do not have documents can be enrolled immediately, giving them sufficient time to obtain the documents, if possible.
Centers operate on schedules that accommodate parents' work hours and weeks: from eight weeks in one location to seven months in another. In fiscal year 2023, the program was once again impacted by COVID-19 and only served 233 children from 174 families. A total of 15 children with disability service plans: 7-IFSP and 8-IEPs. The average monthly enrollment was 34.77%.
Audits
The audit of IDHS had no findings related to the Head Start program. Independent audits of each of the delegates found no material weaknesses.
Medical and Dental Examinations
Although major modifications had to continue in the transporting of and/or arrangements for children to receive screenings, staff made every effort to make sure that Immunizations, Physicals, Well-Baby Checks, Hemoglobin, Lead and TB tests were up to date and tracked effectively. Dental exams, cleanings and fluoride treatments completed within HSPPS required time frame.
Medical
All delegates followed the EPSDT schedule from Illinois. On the online assessment, C.O.P.A., reports can be downloaded with number of children that have services completed according to the EPSDT schedule. As reported in the Office of Head Start's 2023 Program Information Report (PIR), 213 children were up to date on a schedule of age-appropriate preventive and primary health care according to State's EPSDT at the end of the enrollment year. These included screenings for tuberculosis, height and weight, hemoglobin, and lead. The children that did not receive all screenings and physicals were due to leaving the center within 30 days of enrollment. Eight children were diagnosed with a chronic condition of which seven received medical treatment for it; Eighty-nine percent of the children are up to date on all immunizations, or have received all immunizations possible at this time, appropriate for their age; Fifty-five percent of the preschool-aged-children enrolled in 2022-23 year had healthy weight for child's age and sex; sixteen percent were classified as Overweight, 24% as Obese, and 5% were underweight.
Dental
Dental screenings were provided at each site by the Migrant Community Health Partnerships.
Of the total children ages 3 to 5 years-old, 81 had the formal exam completed; 33 of these children needed dental treatment, of which 24 completed it. Reasons for the nine children that did not complete the exam were due to: No dental care available in local area (2); Dentists in the area do not treat 3-5 year-old children (3); Appointment scheduled for future date (2); and, two children were enrolled less than 30 days. The children also had cleaning and fluoride treatment completed.
Forty-three infant and toddler children are up to date according to the dental periodicity schedule in the state's EPSDT schedule.
Health and Safety
Delegate staff participated in active supervision training and started implementing Zoning in the classrooms and playgrounds.
Centers had local law enforcement or FEMA provide Intruder/Active Shooter training. Buildings were toured and recommendations to improve safety were given. One notable recommendation was to have windows tinted so strangers cannot observe in.
Most delegates have installed air purifiers in their classrooms, and in their buses and center vans too.
Health Dept's Wellness on Wheels visited the one center to offer health screenings, Narcan training and administer COVID vaccinations for all interested staff, parents, and community members.
Parent Involvement Activities
Delegates reinstated in-person meetings/events and worked on making these more interactive and innovative to promote attendance and interest in participating in future ones. Also, they continued to send activities and materials home to promote parents to spend time doing educational activities at home with the children. There was noticeable improvement in follow up for these activities from previous year.
All delegates held family book reading and physical activity challenges-two delegates had 100% participation-overall between 45% to 95% of families completed the challenges.
Seventeen parents attended virtual ESL classes and 2 mothers obtained a Food Handing Sanitation Certificate. Other training sessions attended by the parents included topics such as: Managing Stress, Financial Welfare, Cleaning Habits at home, Importance of Recycling, and Nutrition sessions as well as others.
Del Valle MHS continues its success in having 100% parent participation (both male and female) in the web-based parent engagement activities and/or trainings. All fathers with children enrolled in Del Valle, completed the reading challenge, and participated in the Recycling project. Families in this center also participated in short-and-long-term classroom projects.
Overall, forty-four percent of Delegates' Policy Committee members are fathers and forty-three percent of Policy Council members are fathers.
Preparing Children
Teaching staff qualifications
Centers struggled to hire new education staff, while others struggled to retain those that they had. However, all teaching staff members are Head Start qualified and all delegate education coordinators have bachelors' degrees in early childhood education-Eleven percent of Preschool teachers had an advance degree, 67% had a Baccalaureate degree and 22% had an associate degree. Eleven percent of infant-toddler teachers had a Baccalaureate degree, 37% had an associate degree and 52% had a CDA. Five infant/Toffler teachers and 3 additional staff members renewed their CDA's. One staff person is scheduled to complete an associate degree this Spring. One preschool teacher-assistant had not completed her CDA but is scheduled to complete them in the Spring.
Coaching
All delegates continue to offer Practice Based Coaching (PBC) or Coaching using MyTeachstone to their staff. Staff can choose their coaching method. In 2022-23, one PBC consultant coached 2 teaching staff, 8 coaches provided individual coaching to 15 teaching staff received coaching through MyTeachstone Direct Coaching which received, among them, 35 hours of coaching each month-averaging between 1-2 hours each. Seven additional staff used MyTeachstone for their coaching program. Teaching staff using MyTeachstone completed an additional 6 hours of self-directed study. Coaches using MyTeachstone completed 40 minutes of recommended coaching with an additional 4 hours of self-directed study. Overall staff and supervisors were content with the results of both methods.
Curricula
Illinois Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (IMSHS) use the Creative Curriculum® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos in its Infant toddler classrooms and Creative Curriculum® for Preschoolers in its Preschool classrooms. Curricula chosen by IMSHS contain both resources guiding interest area and room preparation as well as instructional content reflecting the most current research. Curricula has been recognized to meet the HSPPS and are evidence-based early childhood curricula which include empirically based scope and sequences grounded in developmental theory.
Delegates complement the curricula with the following: to support the children's language development, the teaching staff will use Planned Language Approach strategies-particularly the Big Five-for all children; to support fitness and healthy development, the teaching staff will use strategies from "I am Learning, I am moving"; and, to support self-discipline the teaching staff will use "Positive Discipline" strategies.
Education Coordinators do monthly classroom observations to evaluate that Creative Curriculum® is implemented with fidelity in each classroom. Results are analyzed and used to plan the appropriate course work, training, coaching, and/or technical assistance for staff development.
Screening and Assessment
Ages and Stages Questionnaires® (ASQ) developmental screening are used to identify concerns in children's development and ASQ-SE is used for the identification of social-emotional challenges. Both ASQ and ASQ-SE have been studied extensively and these show high reliability, internal consistency, sensitivity, and specificity.
Galileo® G-3 Assessments are used in all the classrooms to assess children's developmental levels and ongoing progress. The assessments are aligned to the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework (HSELOF), Illinois Early Learning Standards and Illinois Birth-to-Three Early Learning Guidelines.
In the 2022-23 season, learning activities were provided outdoors as often as possible. Teaching staff completed parent conferences either in person or virtual when it was not safe to conduct them in person. Children's social emotional development seems to have been affected by not attending childcare consistently due to COVID-19, particularly for those 18 months and younger. Nonetheless, between parents and teaching staff working together, children successfully progressed in their development.
Second Language Learners
The grantee understands that it is essential that staff understand that development is influenced by children's culture and linguistic backgrounds and temperaments, among other factors; therefore, planning of learning activities, daily schedules, and the teaching practices must be premeditated by this-If not, appropriate training or coaching must be offered to staff. It is important to state that Infant and toddler classrooms will use the child's home language to enhance or promote development. English, however, not required, can be introduced at minimal levels. In preschool, English will be increased to promote higher levels of proficiency and developmental progress measured by the Galileo G3 English Acquisition Scale. Eighty-six percent of the children in 2022-23 listed Spanish as the primarily language, 1% as Turkish, and 13% list English. Other language spoken at home for some of our Guatemalan children is Q'eqchi', this is spoken along with Spanish. However, over 50% of the children attending the 2022-23 season were bilingual.
Education Services for Children with Disabilities
We served 8 children with IEPs and 7 children with IFSPs; of which, 12 were diagnosed the previous year and three were diagnosed during the program year. All received special education services, mostly at the centers with a few still being provided virtually. All children above have speech and language or other developmental delays.
2022-2023 School Readiness Data
The IMSHS selected a broad-range School Readiness 5-year Goal to allow for the yearly objectives to address the domains of Approaches to Learning, Social and Emotional Development, Language and Literacy, Cognition, and Perceptual, Motor and Physical development. IMSHS goal and objectives are aligned with HSELOF, Illinois State Early Learning Standards and Illinois Birth-to-Three Early Learning Guidelines. The Planning Committee (grantee staff, parents, delegate staff and board members) review children's outcomes data and decide on goals for the following grant year.
During the 2022-23 season, Infants and toddlers (8-24 months) had an overall developmental level average gain of 53 points and learned an average of 29% of the capabilities that have been mapped to school readiness (SR). Children between 2-3 years, had an overall developmental level average gain of 59 points and knew an average of 19% of the capabilities that have been mapped to SR. Preschoolers had an overall developmental level average gain of 47 points and knew an average of 21% of the SR capabilities.
Overall, children's progress was similar for infants in the 0-8 and 8-18 months with an overall 48- and 49-point average. Children between 18-24 months had a greater spike in language and communication and an overall 72-point average. 2-3-year-olds, had an overall 61-point average with the greatest spike in physical development.
Preschool children had between 5-11% developmental gain. Math and Science scores continue to improve, as part of our 5-year goals and objectives-Goal 2- but science development was 4% lower than math and literacy gains. Knowledge Proficiency Profiles indicate that preschool children had the lowest development in Nature and Science capabilities in the 2022-23 season-both boys and girls showed the similar development. Last year it had the highest and the theory is that it was due to teachers planning more outdoor activities due to pandemic. Knowledge Proficiency Profile Reports show preschoolers know many of the capabilities in the Approaches to Learning scales. Nonetheless, children that attended in 2021 and returned in 2022 show higher developmental increase in Nature and Science-49.5-point increase versus 46-point increase in Literacy and 46.5-point increase in Math.
