'Faith-Based' Discrimination

URGENT ** URGENT ** URGENT

HEAD START VOTE NEXT WEEK: OPPOSE CIVIL RIGHTS ROLLBACKS!

Congressman John Boehner (R-OH) plans to introduce a toxic 'faith-based' amendment on the House floor to roll back longstanding critical civil rights protections in the Head Start Program. These critical and fundamental employment nondiscrimination provisions have been included in Head Start legislation since 1972.

Religious organizations have participated in Head Start programs for decades, and have contributed to the education of thousands of students. To date, these religious organizations have complied with Head Start's existing civil rights requirements. However, if the repeal of the existing civil rights protection were to become law, teachers or parent volunteers working in Head Start programs run by religious organizations could immediately lose their jobs because of religious discrimination. Therefore, students participating in Head Start could lose not only their teachers, simply because their teacher held a different religious belief -- but also the close connection with their own parents volunteering in the program. Allowing discrimination based on religion would significantly impede the important goals of Head Start, and harm students by not only separating them from their teachers and parent volunteers, but also by showing them that discrimination is acceptable.

Urge your Congressperson to maintain the bipartisan direction of the School Readiness Act (H.R. 2123) and reject any assault on civil rights protections in federally-funded programs, especially a program as critical as Head Start. This would destroy the bipartisanship nature of a program in which the education of young children is so dependent on parent participation and on ongoing, close relationships with Head Start teachers.

TAKE ACTION!

To find your Representative's phone number click here.

To send your Representative an email message click here.

CALL or EMAIL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose any attempts to roll back civil rights protections in the new Head Start bill. Furthermore, I strongly urge you to oppose the final passage of any legislation that contains these civil rights rollbacks.

Allowing discrimination based on religion would significantly impede the important goals of Head Start, sending a damaging message to Head Start students, and harming their education by separating students from their own teachers and parent volunteers. Head Start is one of our country's most successful programs, and I do not want to ruin it by adding legislation to encourage religious discrimination.

Again, I urge you to oppose any attempts by Rep. Boehner to roll back civil rights protections in the new Head Start bill. I also urge you to oppose the final passage of any legislation that contains these civil rights rollbacks. This is an extremely important issue and one I know I will be following.