Multiple Head Start preschools—which provide free or low-cost child care for low-income parents—are warning that they face imminent closure, as they cannot access the federal funding they had been promised, the Associated Press reported.
Dozens of Head Start providers, who were locked out of the government payment system they use to get their grant funding when the Trump administration froze all federal grant payments, say they are still locked out of the payment system, even though two federal judges said the freeze was illegal and ordered it to be lifted immediately.
Head Start provides preschool and other services to nearly 800,000 low-income children in the United States. Providers say a freeze in payments could cause them to be unable to make payroll for their employees, which would force them to shut their facilities down.
The AP reported that at least one Head Start provider in Wisconsin had to close for a week because the funds from the government didn't come through—a move that hurt the working parents who now unexpectedly had no child care.
“They cannot go to work [or] they have to scramble to find somebody else to watch their children, whether that’s another family member or a neighbor or some other in-home, potentially unlicensed, you know, child care arrangement,” Bill Walsh, the operations director of the National Centers for Learning Excellence Head Start provider, told the AP.
Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, told the AP, “If this situation is not resolved immediately, I am anticipating seeing more centers having to close.”
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan on Monday ordered the Trump administration to show that they are complying with her order to lift the freeze, amid reports that legally owed payments are not being made.
“Every day that the [funding] pause continues to ripple across the country is an additional day that Americans are being denied access to programs that heal them, house them,” AliKhan wrote in an order.
Sen. Dick Durbin
Meanwhile, Democrats are still fighting to get the freeze lifted.
Twenty-seven Democratic senators sent a letter to the acting director of the Department of Health and Human Services, which doles out the Head Start funding, demanding answers as to why the payments are not being made.
“For many families, Head Start is day care. Head Start is Pre-K. Head Start is a chance for kids in tough family circumstances to have a fighting chance. Of course, the Head Start agencies need to get their federal funds to keep the lights on, to feed the kids, to make sure they can heat the buildings in the winter,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said in a speech on the Senate floor on Jan. 29, as chaos over the Trump administration freeze began.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, wrote in a post on X, "The Administration needs to restore funding to all Head Start programs—now.”
Of course, Trump and his co-President, Elon Musk, don’t care about kids or their hardworking parents who will now struggle to find child care and services. Trump and Musk have already put the Department of Education—which doles out money to low-income school districts and helps enforce the civil rights of students with disabilities—on the chopping block.
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