Inside Higher Ed | ‘Matchmaking’ Community Colleges and Head Start

Community colleges serve high numbers of parenting students, but too few institutions have campus childcare centers, or sufficient spots to meet demand, to help these students persist and graduate. At the same time, Head Start, a federally funded program offering free early childhood education to low-income families, is suffering from enrollment declines and staffing shortages.

The National Head Start Association (NHSA) and the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) are partnering in hopes of addressing both problems. Leaders of the two organizations plan to lay the groundwork to bring more Head Start centers to community college campuses. They say the program is a natural fit for campuses serving student parents, but these potential collaborations too often go unexplored because campus and Head Start staff members need help forging relationships and navigating the logistics of campuses hosting the federal program.

SDI Productions/E+/Getty Images