The national Head Start program began in 1965 with the mission of giving economically disadvantaged three- and four-year-olds a "head start" in getting ready to learn in school and, thereby, a head start on being successful, productive citizens.
Ella Allen, now the executive director of the McIntosh Trail Early Childhood Development Council, Inc., the non-profit organization that operates the Head Start program in Butts and six other counties, was in the group that helped bring Head Start to Butts County in the 1960s. Thousands of local children and their families have benefited from the program in the intervening years and continue to do so daily.
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