The Newark Preschool Council Head Start Program is dedicated to a compassionate partnership with parents. We believe that parents are the first and most important educators of their children. We empower families to develop to their full potential by nurturing goals and habits that extend beyond the Head Start experience. We provide comprehensive services to children and their families through education, collaboration, and visionary leadership.

Qualified, competent caring staff provides a developmentally appropriate, culturally diverse learning environment for children that promotes growth and is responsive to individual needs.

The Newark Preschool Council Head Start program began as a Head Start Demonstration Program in 1965. It was one of the first of its kind in the nation established as one of the many anti-poverty programs during the Johnson administration. Newark Preschool Council began as a delegate agency of the United Community Corporation. From the start in 1965, parents played a leading role in the agency’s activities. For example, they helped in recruiting the first children, located the first classrooms and when funding finally came through, they became the first employees, setting a pattern that has persisted through the years. Entry-level employment opportunities for parents, coupled with training and education has been a hallmark of the organization.

Parents as members of the policy making boards at the center and agency levels, became skilled advocates for the program as they joined their counterparts throughout the nation in convincing a reluctant Congress of the values of a Head Start Program. While Head Start is now nationally recognized for its success in preparing urban children for public school, the struggle continues in validating and justifying continued funding and expansion of services annually on the federal level.

Newark Preschool Council, Inc. became an independent grantee in 1982 with its own administrative structure. Forty years from its beginning as an experiment, the agency is a living monument to the foresight and determination of a group of community leaders and parents who dreamt of helping Newark’s children get a head start in life by involving their families in the early childhood educational process.

No longer an experiment, Newark Preschool Council, Inc. now has a place in the community as a permanent, Early Childhood Education Program with a solid record of administering Head Start and more recently, the state-mandated Abbott programs. The agency currently has forty-six facilities throughout the city and serves 2,504 children ages three and four with a staff of over 550 assuring that their learning experience will be joyful and productive.

Forty years ago, classes were held in facilities leased to the program by local churches. Forty years ago, the administrative offices were housed in a storefront on South Orange Avenue. Throughout the years, we have grown. Today, we are proud of the state-of-the-art classrooms at our agency-owned facilities at the Alberta Bey Head Start and Health Center in the south ward, Sharpe James and the Audrey West Head Start Centers in the north ward, and the Edna R. Thomas Head Start Center in the west ward. Additionally, state-of-the-art classrooms are located in the Metropolitan Head Start Center, a unique collaboration with the Metropolitan Baptist Church. All are multi-service facilities containing at least three to five classrooms; outdoor play areas; offices and parent rooms.

To ensure that quality health care services are available and accessible to our children, the Alberta Bey Head Start Center, operates a Women, Infants and Children (WIC) supplemental nutrition program at that site in cooperation with the Newark Department of Health. Newark Preschool Council also enjoys collaborating with the Newark Community Health Center to provide medical and dental screenings to the children enrolled in our program.