- Head Start eliminated services to 57,000 children in U.S. as a result of sequester, By Michael Alison Chandler, August 18, 2013, Washington Post: “Head Start programs across the country eliminated services for 57,000 children in the coming school year to balance budgets diminished by the federal sequester, cutting 1.3 million days from Head Start center calendars and laying off or reducing pay for more than 18,000 employees, according to federal government data scheduled for release Monday…”
- Head Start hit with worst cuts in its history, By Adrienne Lu, August 19, 2013, USA Today: “Last year about 1 million of the nation’s poorest children got a leg up on school through Head Start, the federal program that helps prepare children up to age five for school. This fall, about 57,000 children will be denied a place in Head Start and Early Head Start as fallout from sequestration. New estimates about the automatic budget cuts were released Monday by the federal government. The cuts have slashed over $400 million from the federal program’s $8 billion budget…”
- Pa. taxpayers end up paying more as public defenders laid off, By Brian Bowling, August 18, 2013, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “In Western Pennsylvania, budget sequestration measures are pushing the federal court system to rely on $125-an-hour private attorneys instead of public defenders who typically cost taxpayers $75 or less for hourly work on criminal cases. That 67 percent increase in providing legal services to indigent criminal defendants is just one way that budget ‘cuts’ will end up costing taxpayers more, while undermining the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of fair and speedy trials, legal experts contend…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty