The Aug. 10 article “Trump deregulation plan vexes Head Start providers” raises important questions about proposed changes to Head Start and what they could mean for children and families across Illinois and the country. I am particularly concerned about what these changes could mean for the health screenings that are a critical part of Head Start and its commitment to the health, development and school readiness of children from families with lower incomes.
Early childhood is a critical time for vision development. Identifying a problem and connecting a child to care can mean the difference between the child seeing clearly in the classroom and struggling to learn.
Research has found that approximately 1 in 5 Head Start preschoolers have a vision disorder. Current Head Start standards require evidence-based vision screening within 45 days of a child’s first day in the program, with appropriate referral for follow-up vision care when a potential vision problem is identified. The proposed changes would loosen those requirements, allowing greater variation in how and when children are screened.
That may sound like regulatory flexibility, but it risks creating even greater inconsistency among programs and could result in children receiving screenings that do not follow evidence-informed guidelines.
Through our National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health, we train the professionals at Head Start programs across the country. Through this work, we have seen the difference vision screening can make in a child’s life. One program shared the story of a toddler whose screening identified astigmatism in both eyes, leading to an eye exam and glasses. Another reported that eight children referred for eye care following vision screenings received no-cost exams and glasses, with families reporting improvements in their learning. These screenings are working.
Yes, states and communities should have flexibility to meet the needs of their children. But flexibility should not come at the expense of evidence-based standards that we know help children thrive. Illinois children — and children everywhere — deserve the same opportunity for a healthy start, regardless of their family’s income or where they happen to live.
— Jeff Todd, president and CEO, Prevent Blindness, Chicago
Making a dent in debt
Letter writer Larry Craig (“We can’t ignore national debt,” Aug. 11) does a great job pointing out that a major cause of our ever increasing debt is that we are now incurring about $1 trillion of annual expense paying the interest on the debt that we have previously accumulated. But he loses it by saying that we can fix our enormous debt by reducing spending!
As always when talking about cutting spending, no one ever begins to detail enough spending cuts to make a dent in our deficits.
No, the obvious and only answer is to vastly increase revenues. And to get vast increases in revenue, it can only come from those who have vast wealth. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy. We all aspire to be wealthy. Our free enterprise economy works only because people pursue wealth. America has achieved incredible invention, innovation and wealth because of that, as well as offering every individual complete freedom to go where they want, do what they want and achieve what they want, limited only by their own talents and ambitions.
I would propose a wealth tax on amounts of household wealth in excess of $10 million. This only affects 1% of American households, but together, they have about $55 trillion in wealth. A 5% tax on household wealth in excess of $10 million would produce more than enough revenue to eliminate our deficit and eventually pay down the debt before it buries us.
This is not to punish people for being rich, but to preserve our nation for the benefit of all. Wealth in excess of $10 million is invariably invested and should easily make more than a 5% return.
Wealthy people will continue to increase their wealth, just a little slower.
— David Rosenak, Highland Park
Raise taxes, cut spending
I believe our government is digging us a debt hole that we aren’t going to be able to crawl out of, and that scares the bejesus out of me. The national debt is over $40 trillion, and we are borrowing at a high interest rate. The debt is increasing faster and faster.
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Our government has passed on dealing with this for years and many administrations. We all know that this is easy to fix with one of three options: Bring in more revenue than we spend, keep revenue the same and spend less, or a combination of the two by increasing revenue and spending less. It seems to me that the best of the three options is the third: Increase revenue and spend less.
The hard part is there are people who will feel some pain, and elected officials don’t want to cause pain since it may cost them votes. But isn’t their job to be looking out for all us and not themselves? U.S. revenue comes from taxes, so every time taxes are reduced, our debt increases faster. We must increase taxes to cover our spending. Reducing spending is actually much tougher, but with appropriate audits of our spending and looking at the return on our spending (wiser use of our money), I have faith a reasonable reduction can be found.
When you pick a candidate, find one who will work for you and do what must be done — reduce spending and increase taxes.
— Jim Shapiro, Kenosha, Wisconsin
Let’s reclaim community
For the last 20 years, we Americans have stumbled. We have increasingly used our time, talents and treasures to place the future hope of our republic in political activity and political parties rather than in each other as neighbors, citizens and community. We have been seeking to elect the next great political figure who will take us to the promised land.
Two decades on, not much has come from the exhausting, overcharged energy we have put into politics. We certainly cannot claim that as a people, nation or democracy, we are doing better.
We arrived here because we misunderstood something fundamental: that politics, while important, is not the most critical feature of our democracy. It was never intended to be. Politics itself cannot solve what needs to be resolved when we’re talking about the foundations of our nation.
If not politics, then what is the path forward? Starting now, we return to each other as neighbors, relearn our role as citizens and do the hard work of building community. Therefore, it’s time to live out our complete role as citizens, not merely our political selves.
Creating community with neighbors is nearly the opposite of how politics works. Politics divides. Community unites. Here is how we begin making this change.
Community starts with being neighborly to all around you. Friendliness and hospitality matter. Citizens learn to move from self-interest to other-interest, from knowing those they want to help to helping those they know are their neighbors merely by virtue of geography.
Community then moves to do its own hard work. Building on social bonds, neighbors come together in their role as citizens to solve shared neighborhood problems and address challenges. These repeated experiences are how citizenship is found and learned, and how community is formed and modeled. Politics and parties cannot create authentic community, for they limit who is in the community. Politics is the easy proposition. Community is the hard demand. Politics asks that we find those like us and seek more of them, while leaving others aside. Community requires us to be all together and keep on keeping on.
This then is the modern “e pluribus unum”: more community. Less politics. More solutions. Less ideology.
Are you ready to be neighbors (again)? If yes, then the preservation of our republic is at hand and in good hands. Only in community will we find ourselves, each other and our democracy.
— Jac Charlier, Chicago
Note to readers
Construction on Chicago streets and bridges this summer has created headaches for many drivers. We’d like to hear from you about your frustrations with the delays and the city’s management of the closures and detours. Send a letter of no more than 400 words by Wednesday, Sept. 2 to [email protected]. Be sure to include your full name and city/town.
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