HEADSTART

Ever wonder what it cost to run the Head Start Program? According to information in this flyer they receive a $1,578,927 grant along with $394,732 in volunteer and donation dollars for a total of $1,973,659. Yes, you read it right! Right at two million dollars a year. This program serves 211 children in Hill, Blaine, and Liberty Counties for a mere cost of $9,354 each per year. Is this a good deal for us, the tax-payers? While the jury is out on that question the childcare folk at the State bureaucracys claim that this gives these 211 local children the ability to “go to school ready” thus saving the tax-payer money in the long run.

If you go to the State website at www.childcare.mt.gov you will see page after page of documentation trying to convince you of the “merits” of their programs, but what infuriates me is the same old song and dance trying to get me to believe that these Government run programs are part of Montana’s “ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT”. Just what increase to the economy does a government program give us? Of course it is logical to claim that a program for people to become educated to rise up out of poverty has merit but it is not really something you can call economic development. Expenditure of tax dollars in a local community would seem to help the economy of that community but at what cost? Currently Head Start employs over 50 people to run this program benefiting 211 children. Is that a good return on investment for the tax-payers? And is employing 50 people with tax dollars that were taken from the local community for Federal and State taxes really creating “economic development” or decreasing development? Or is it just re-circulating existing dollars in a back-handed redistribution of wealth scheme? The website further goes on to state that Head Start eases the frequency of employee absences as 21% of all missed work is caused by “family issues”, hence they are helping the economy by keeping people at work. I further wonder how all these “fact finding” missions, studies, and websites funded with tax dollars justifying their very existence cost the over-burdened taxpayer.
Be sure and take a look at yet another burocratic website www.childcare.mt.gov and give us your opinion.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, MY FOOT!