It had been nearly two weeks since the government turned all federal grants and loans off and then back on again, but many Head Start child care providers across the country still couldn’t get their money until the past few days. Some, in Wisconsin, started taking out lines of credit. Others came close to shutting their doors, at least temporarily, which would leave hundreds of low-income families without child care.
When you turn the federal government off, you can’t just switch it back on again. Even after the administration reversed its funding freeze that the OMB had ordered in late January, dozens of programs were unable to access their funding. One of those programs is Head Start, the program that funds early-childhood education and care for hundreds of thousands of low-income children across the country. Many Head Start providers were still unable to access their funding as of Friday, February 7, nearly two weeks after the funding freeze was rescinded.
Head Start is a program of the Department of Health and Human Services that provides child care for low-income children and resources for their parents. The program, which turns 60 this year, is massively successful at lifting children out of poverty. A UCLA study published this year found that low-income kids who had a Head Start provider in their county ended up graduating from high school and college at higher rates than their peers without a Head Start provider. They earned more, were less likely to claim disability, and by so doing actually made money for the federal government. Researchers say that the government makes between 5 and 9 percent more per year for every child it puts through Head Start than the cost of funding that child’s participation in the program, due to savings on public assistance funds.
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Head Start centers aren’t run by the government, but depend on its funding to keep their doors open. The federal funding goes to local day care centers that provide food, health checkups, and education for the country’s poorest children from birth to age five. All the funding that Head Start programs receive comes in the form of reimbursements to the centers for costs that they’ve already taken on for rent, supplies, and payroll.
“The last two weeks have been a very bumpy road,” said Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start. “At least in the state of Washington, it was very close to kids just being locked out of child care, and the parents would have to scramble to find child care for their kids.”
In Washington state, 13 percent of the families Head Start serves are experiencing homelessness. Forty-three percent of the children are Latino. The families that rely on Head Start for child care, food, and health services were, in some cases, just days away from being left in the cold.
Theoretically, Head Start programs should have been able to access their funding on January 29, when the OMB freeze was rescinded. But it wasn’t that simple. Ryan described the aftermath of the funding freeze as a “rolling blackout” across providers in the state. Some were getting their funds, while others were still waiting. Then the blackout would shift, and other providers would encounter new difficulties. This continued until late last week, when Ryan said all of the state’s Head Start programs were finally able to access their money.
A similar situation happened in Wisconsin, said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association. Mauer described a chaotic scene for the state’s 39 Head Start grantees. On January 27, the night the OMB memo came out, texts started to fly between providers and advocates: “Oh God, what does this mean for us?” Mauer said. On the 28th, she started getting emails from Head Start programs confirming everyone’s fears: Providers were locked out of the payment management system that gave them their funding.
Mauer also said that Wisconsin programs received zero communication from the federal government. “Typical operating procedure is a tremendous amount of communication with the Office of Head Start,” she said. But that first week after the freeze, there was nothing. “It was really terrible, because we were totally in the dark,” Mauer said.
By Thursday, January 30, Mauer said, some of Wisconsin’s programs were able to access their funds, but others weren’t. By the next day, there were still several programs that had zero access and zero communication. According to Mauer, eight Head Start organizations serving 3,000 children were still waiting for payment by the first week of February.
A survey conducted by the National Head Start Association found that, as of Thursday, February 6, 52 Head Start programs serving 20,000 children were unable to access their grant funding. Now, although the majority of Head Start programs have finally been able to access their funds, nobody is breathing a sigh of relief.
“I remain deeply concerned,” Mauer said. “Head Start is about supporting working families, and if the administration is hoping to support working families, they should be all in for Head Start.”
Ryan, in Washington state, sees the Head Start ordeal as the beginning of a larger attack on programs that support the most vulnerable Americans. “This is a concerted assault on programs that support low-income kids and their families. Ultimately, this is teeing up a giant tax cut for billionaires and millionaires.”
Ryan’s analysis certainly appears right. The Trump administration has already shown that they’re willing to decimate essential programs if it will save them money. Next on their chopping block could be the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or programs that help house low-income families. Moreover, Project 2025 proposes getting rid of Head Start altogether, which would leave almost 800,000 children and parents without essential services and eliminate the jobs of 250,000 Head Start staffers.
The parents whose kids are in Head Start “are really people who are living on the margins. Not only does it provide a lifeline for them to be able to go to work because it offers quality child care, but it provides all these other wraparound services for families who need it,” Ryan said. “We know [Donald Trump] is a bully, but the fact that he’s bullying these kids, when you see their demographics, it’s really sad.”
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