Head Start workers rally at Providence City Hall Thursday to protest a move by Children’s Friend and Service, the new program manager, to have them reapply for their jobs.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

PROVIDENCE — Children’s Friend and Service, a city social-service agency, is set to take over the city’s Head Start program next month, but union members are complaining that the new manager is laying them off and requiring them to re-apply for their jobs along with potential new employees.

About 70 teachers, custodians, social workers, aides, parents and children rallied at City Hall late Thursday. Chanting “We are Head Start,” they called for Children’s Friend to meet with employees and recognize its union, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union. According to the union, the approximately 200-member staff of Providence Head Start received layoff notices effective June 12.

“Every one of us has dedicated our lives to this program,” said Tina Heyder, a teacher for nearly a decade at the Cianci Center Head Start on Smith Hill. “We just want to know that our jobs will be there tomorrow.”

The City Council, meeting later, unanimously approved a resolution supporting the union’s demands.

“If you’re really about children, friends and service, then you should be talking to the people who have done it for over 20 years,” said City Councilor Luis A. Aponte, the resolution’s sponsor. “Give them the opportunity to work that they deserve and make the commitment to assuring the continuity of care for our children.”

Children’s Friend issued a statement saying that the layoff notices were issued by an interim contractor that was running the program. The statement said Children’s Friend is accepting resumes and that all candidates –– including current employees of Head Start–– must meet federal requirements for employment. A seven-member panel of parents will select the employees.Children’s Friend is a 175-year-old nonprofit agency that runs, among other city programs, Early Head Start, which provides assistance to parents with infants. The federal government recently awarded it a $7-million annual contract to run Head Start, which serves young children up to 5 years of age.

Children’s Friend will officially take the reins of the program, which serves about 1,100 low-income children in Providence and the Blackstone Valley through three centers in the city and three in Pawtucket, on June 15.

Past problems at Providence Head Start stemmed from poor management, not the staff, according to Aponte, the councilor.

In October 2007, Head Start lost its federal funding after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that the program failed to conduct criminal background checks on employees and ran two Pawtucket classrooms in a basement, violating state law that forbids classrooms below ground level.

The federal government brought in the Community Development Institute, an interim provider based in Denver, to run the program, which is headquartered near the Chad Brown housing complex on Smith Hill, until a local agency could be selected.

“The children and families are very close to these teachers,” Aponte said. “It seems unjust to let them go without any understanding of what the future holds.”

For the past year and a half, the city program has been run by an interim staff. Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, took an e-mailed list of questions from a reporter, but had not responded by press time.

gmacris@projo.com