Jule Sugarman, 1927 - 2010

Jule Sugarman, a public administrator whose skill at navigating the federal bureaucracy made him a key figure in founding the Head Start early education program for poor children, died of cancer November 2 at his home in Seattle.  He was 83. 

A behind-the-scenes liberal stalwart, Mr. Sugarman had a distinguished career as an administrator in New York City, Atlanta, and Washington, where he served under President Jimmy Carter as vice chairman of the Civil Service Commission and deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management.  He was perhaps best known as an architect of Head Start, conceived in 1965 as a way to close the achievement gap between low-income and middle-class children.

Head Start was shepherded by the president's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, who served as the project's honorary chairman and chief cheerleader among the political classes.  But it was Mr. Sugarman who dealt with the all-important, ever-mundane job of chopping through red tape to turn vision into reality.  As secretary of Head Start's planning commission, he had organized the meetings that resulted in an outline of the new program.  He developed a streamlined grant application process to push money out the door quickly, and he recruited hundreds of volunteers to help the country's poorest districts apply.  He went on to run Head Start's daily operations for its first five years. 

The Exchange article, "The Start of Head Start," demonstrated that while Sugarman admired the ideals of Johnson's Great Society programs, he favored expediency over perfection:

"A story indicative of the haste with which Head Start was planned — President Johnson in developing the initial budget for Head Start needed to know the cost per child.  He asked Sargent Shriver, and Shriver asked Sugarman, and gave him an hour to come up with a figure.  Sugarman relates, 'So another fellow and I sat down over a ham sandwich and arrived at $180 per child for an eight-week program.'  That hastily derived figure became the basis for developing a $50 million request to Congress."

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