FLORA - Four-year-old Kyle Welch speared a bite-size morsel of beef ravioli with his fork and was about to pick up some green beans with his fingers when he remembered … the fork.
It was the sandy-haired youngster's second day in Head Start here at Smith Chapel Head Start Center.
Moments earlier, Kyle had been first with his hand up to answer "Mississippi," and "Flora" when I asked Ms. Alma Lou Williams' class to name their home state and town.
But what little Kyle and his 73 schoolmates (3 and 4 years old) in the sparkling new $1.2 million Head Start center here didn't know is they have become pawns in a huge Washington political chess game launched by the Bush administration.
Some alleged wiseacres in the administration are pushing a plan - already passed by a 217-216 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives - which smacks of dismantling Head Start's 38-year-old success story.
Head Start has become the Bushies' latest target of devolution, the process of divesting the federal government of responsibility to fund and oversee programs that have benefited millions of Americans, and toss them over to the states.
Of course, the states are so cash-strapped that they neither want or need the feds to hand them the burden of picking up the tab and running another major program. More especially, Head Start, which long-ago proved itself by being operated through local community-based sponsors under federal grants and guidelines.
Mississippi was a prime example of why Head Start, designed as a bootstrap school readiness and pre-literacy program for children from poor families, came into being in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. For this poor state it was a godsend.
In the years since, Head Start has become deeply enmeshed in Mississippi's social and educational fabric, a cornerstone for improving the quality of life for the "least of our brethren," of whom this state has a great many.
Many whites in Mississippi regarded Head Start at its inception as a taxpayer-funded boondoggle to provide a huge baby-sitting nursery for black kids. They have been proved wrong since, as 500,000 of the state's most vulnerable children have been better able to compete in school and life.
As Mrs. Ida Russell, manager of the Smith Chapel Center and a veteran of the program, observed: "When it began, Head Start brought many out of the cotton fields, but over the years it has proven that it has made a positive difference in the lives not only of children, but also the family."
Housed in its impressive new six-room buff-brick building, the Head Start center here obviously has strong support from Flora's mayor, J.W. Richardson (who is white), who dropped in during my visit to the center. "We're progressive here in Flora and this is just an example of it," he said.
His attitude sharply differs from my recollections of how Mississippi's white political structure resisted and tried to thwart the mostly black Head Start sponsoring groups from getting the program off the ground in the mid-1960s, even harassing them with Sovereignty Commission agents.
As the name implies, the origins of the Head Start school here had some association with a local Baptist church named Smith Chapel.
When the first Head Start school here was to be opened in 1965, it was supposed to be housed in the church, but after elders received threatening calls that the church was in danger, the school was moved to an old apartment.
(Remember, in the two-year span of 1964 and 1965, more than 60 black churches across the state were set afire or bombed by clandestine night-riders.)
Andrew Thompson of Flora, then a farmer, was one of the local black pioneers who helped found the original Head Start school and is still one of its most loyal backers.
"The white community didn't want it (Head Start) back then because they couldn't set on top of it and run it, and they didn't help," Thompson, a sturdy 87-year-old World War II Army Air Corps veteran, told me.
Looking over a list of Smith Chapel Head Start's 2,200 alumni who have gone on to become doctors, medical technicians, educators and successful business persons, Thompson said: "If it hadn't been for Head Start, they wouldn't be where they are today."
He said he has read only sketchy details of how the Bush administration proposes to revamp Head Start, "but what I've seen, I don't like. We have proved it has worked, and now they want to use us as a guinea pig."
Today the state has 334 Head Start centers operated by 24 different private sponsors with a total of 26,742 enrollees. Ninety percent must come from families at or below the poverty level. Among the largest sponsors are Friends of Children, which covers 15 counties, and Mississippi Action for Progress (MAP) in 22 counties.
One side of Head Start that is little known is the role it has played in assisting unemployed parents of Head Start children to receive job training or secure employment.
Because the massive new Nissan plant at Canton is only 17 miles from Flora, Smith Chapel's Ida Russell has held job workshops for out-of-work parents and also provided transportation for them to Nissan job fairs. "Ours is really a one-on-one relationship with the parents," she said.
The Bush administration proposal initially would have eight states take over Head Start, of which Mississippi is not one. But it is naive for anyone (U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering voted for it) to think Mississippi would escape being devoured sooner or later.
As the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Head Start fits that description to a T.
