Framingham receives funding to run six Head Start classrooms as part of the federal effort to combat poverty.
The Head Start program is a federal initiative to prepare low-income children socially, emotionally, physically, and psychologically for school, and ultimately for success in breaking the cycle of poverty. The program is based on 'Las Escuelas Maternales', childcare centers founded by a Puerto Rican politician Doña Fela which allowed women to go to work. Head Start starts as summer programming only but the federal government quickly decides to make it year-long. Arthur Chaves, assistant principal in the Framingham public school system, applies for funding and becomes director of the local program.
Chaves recalls some opposition in the community about supporting poor children and immigrants. Despite some pushback, the program is largely sucessful, so much so that it regionalizes and begins serving children in Ashland, Bellingham, Holliston, Hopkinton, Hudson, Natick, Southborough, and Wayland.
