Early childhood educators with the federal Head Start program nationwide are experiencing a fresh round of funding delays and administrative headaches, with some providers left with no option but to temporarily close their doors and lay off staff.
These challenges are already causing widespread alarm and distress among providers and the families they serve. But they may pale in comparison to what’s next.
President Donald Trump is reportedly readying a budget proposal that aims to shut down the Head Start program altogether. Already, sweeping federal staffing cuts have decimated regional Head Start offices that serve roughly half the country.
“We walked off a cliff into a black hole,” Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, said of the last few months.
Most providers have been able to continue serving students without interruption. But a handful of programs in Florida and Washington state with hundreds of enrolled students shut down in early and mid-April due to funding lapses, only to receive their expected allocations of funds that enabled them to reopen a few days later. Providers who serve 900 students in southern Oregon were only two days away from closing down when their expected funding came through on April 11.
On April 28, four state Head Start associations joined parent groups from California and Oregon and the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s actions towards Head Start as unlawful and unconstitutional. The groups are calling for a court order that reverses recent layoffs and funding changes affecting Head Start.
The existential tumult around Head Start is part of a broader suite of Trump administration policies that some experts see as a systemic effort to hobble federal infrastructure that supports children—shuttering child care centers in federal buildings nationwide; canceling funds that supply healthy foods for school meals; and axing public health efforts designed to protect children from exposure to toxic chemicals.
Head Start programs and the vulnerable families they serve are likely to feel the cascading effects of these policies, said Ariel Kalil, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Chicago who studies child development.
If Head Start disappears, working parents with few alternatives will lose child care options that enable them to earn a living, Kalil said. Children who need extra support to thrive in school and into adulthood will instead fall even further behind.
“If you come from a really rich home environment where parents are talking and reading to you all the time, then obviously Head Start is not going to add a whole lot on top of that,” Kalil said. “If you are a child whose alternative is that they’re not getting enrichment in the other environments where they spend their time, Head Start is super important.”
A spokesperson for the health and human services agency didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication. After a February visit to a Head Start program in Virginia, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said his tour was “very inspiring.”
Funding troubles began at the start of the Trump administration
Head Start began under the umbrella of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964. Today, roughly 1,600 providers nationwide receive federal funding to offer instruction, meals, health care, counseling, and other services to more than 800,000 children from birth to age 5.
Head Start traditionally garners bipartisan support, and Congress has continued to increase investments over time, though it’s fallen well short of serving all the children who qualify under the program’s income guidelines.
But just a week into Trump’s second term, providers began struggling to access the online platform they use to draw down the federal money that makes up the bulk of their operating budgets.
The technical problems coincided with the government-wide funding freeze Trump announced but never ultimately enacted. The administration said Head Start would be exempted even if the broader freeze went into effect. But more than a week after the administration withdrew the freeze plan, dozens of providers reported they still couldn’t access federal money to pay staff salaries.
We walked off a cliff into a black hole.
Those problems cleared up after a few weeks, leaving providers hopeful that the worst was behind them.
But in early April, an even bigger bombshell hit: The federal Department of Health and Human Services announced massive staff reductions that included abruptly closing five of the 10 regional offices—located in Boston, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle—that support Head Start programs nationwide.
Until this month, each of those regional offices has employed a handful of people who serve as the liaison between the federal government and programs in a particular set of states.
Now, programs in close to half of U.S. states, as well as territories like American Samoa, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau, have no designated federal contact to answer urgent questions about securing annual funding, complying with regulations, and applying for the standard five-year reauthorization that allows existing programs to continue operating under the Head Start banner. Almost a month after the offices were closed, HHS hasn’t disclosed who will take on the responsibilities they were forced to leave behind.
The following 22 states no longer have an assigned regional Head Start office: Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Some Head Start providers received no official HHS notification that their assigned program officer had been laid off until two days after the agency cuts hit the news. In the same five cities, the Trump administration also closed five regional locations of the office of child care, which supplies financial assistance to low-income families.
Typically, in the weeks leading up to a new round of funding, providers are in touch with their program officers about the documentation they need to fill out, and the timeline for receiving their award. But programs in states no longer represented by a regional office have instead sent dispatches to a catch-all HHS email address, which has responded weeks late if it has responded at all.
Experienced Head Start directors like Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane in rural Wisconsin, worry that newer directors in particular will struggle without the expertise from the federal government.
Bailey is also worried about what happens if an expensive piece of furniture breaks—any equipment expense of more than $10,000 requires approval from the regional office.
“Right now there’s literally no one to ask,” Bailey said.
Closing half the regional Head Start offices increases the risk that no one will be able to offer timely help when issues with child safety or facilities projects arise, said Katie Hamm, who oversaw Head Start in her role as deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development during the Biden administration.
“The regional offices were already understaffed for their current workload,” Hamm said.
Head Start programs are experiencing new layers of red tape
Providers in many states in recent weeks have also been confronting new problems with accessing federal money. Some appear to be connected to the federal layoffs, while the cause for other issues remains mysterious.
The programs on the front lines of the cuts are those whose fiscal year starts May 1 or June 1. That includes some programs whose fiscal year typically starts Nov. 1 or Dec. 1—but the second half of their annual allocation is slated to arrive six months after the first half, because Congress hasn’t approved a final federal budget for the current fiscal year.
Thanh Bui-Duquette, Head Start director for the Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council in Wisconsin, on Feb. 1 submitted to the regional office her 90-page application for the annual round of federal funding set to arrive May 1. She oversees programs serving rural farming communities at nine centers in the western part of the state.
Bui-Duquette had been working with the same federal employee for 13 years. Now that person is gone, and she was in the dark about whether her organization would get its authorization by May 1. It ultimately did, on April 25—but only for half the annual amount.
“I would be lying if I say it’s been OK,” she said.
Programs nationwide have also had to cross new layers of red tape.
The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) contacted providers on March 14, threatening to withhold federal funding for any programs that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The email didn’t specify which programs would violate that policy.
A month later, DOGE emailed again with a new “Defend the Spend” requirement for providers: Each time they request to use the federal money Congress allocated for them, they have to send a written explanation of how the money will be used. The agency is reportedly requiring programs to secure approval from political appointees in the Health and Human Services department rather than the career officials who have long dealt with Head Start programs.
The federal government is requiring these justifications even though providers already have to send detailed explanations in order to qualify for federal money in the first place.
“As a taxpayer I do not believe it is efficient to twice justify things they’ve already justified in a well-oiled system that previously used to work,” Mauer said.
At least one provider received an initial rejection after submitting a justification to receive some federal money, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. That provider did ultimately get the funding it asked for, but only after more back-and-forth with the government, Sheridan said.
Funding delays could be particularly damaging for big programs that serve thousands of students in urban areas, Hamm, the Biden-era Head Start official, said. Many of those programs have grant cycles that begin during the summer, in anticipation of a new school year.
“I have been describing [recent events] like a game of whack-a-mole,” Hamm said. “You have one issue, you think you’ve resolved that, here’s another one.”
Senators demand answers
Forty-two senators—all Democrats—wrote to Kennedy on April 24 demanding details about the Head Start layoffs, new spending review requirements, and funding delays.
Even if funding returns and programs reopen, temporary layoffs can put providers on the hook for unemployment bills that may drain their limited resources and prevent them from reopening at the same capacity, said Kara McFalls, executive director of the Pennsylvania Head Start Association.
A program director in Missouri told the news station KFVS 12 the closure of two under-enrolled Head Start programs was due to a political environment in which it’s “absolutely necessary to be efficient.”
Threats to the program’s long-term future also will make it harder to recruit and retain quality employees, and keep local economies afloat, providers say.
One rural provider in Pennsylvania recently lost a “fantastic” staff person to a higher-paying and less precarious job in the local school district, McFalls said.
Meanwhile, prospects remain uncertain for Head Start surviving GOP lawmakers’ plans to slash billions from the federal budget. State associations, county commissioners, and program alumni have already begun advocating to keep the program alive.
Mike Kehoe, the Republican governor of Missouri, said last week that he would push to use the state’s surplus if the state loses $208 million in federal funds for Head Start, and other Republican governors like Iowa’s Kim Reynolds have championed expanding child care in recent years.
But not every state official has the resources or political will to prioritize this issue, said Lenice Emanuel, executive director of the Alabama Institute for Social Justice. More than half of the state is classified as a “child care desert,” where the number of children who need care outpaces the number of seats at local centers.
“It’s almost like you’re about to completely dismantle an entire community’s ability to be empowered to be able to work and take care of their families,” Emanuel said. “From an ideological standpoint, what is the intent of that? Are you really trying to take people back to an era where they could not work and take care of themselves?”
The leaked draft White House budget document that proposes eliminating Head Start also says HHS should collaborate with the Office of Management and Budget “to ensure to the extent allowable FY 2025 funds are made available to close out the program.” Unless Congress designates those funds for that purpose, Head Start programs would legally have to continue, Hamm said.
Further disruption to Head Start will inevitably filter down to K-12 classrooms as well, experts say. Without the instruction and support providers offer to enrolled children, teachers in kindergarten and beyond will have to help make up the difference.
“Programs can be improved,” Kalil said. “But there’s no sincere interest in taking something good and making it excellent. It’s just destruction.”
