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Families rely on federally funded Head Start programs, which in some cases are the only licensed child care providers in a community.
At first, everything was normal. Inspire Development Centers, a Head Start program in Washington state, was due for the annual tranche of its five-year federal grant on December 1, but Congress passed just a three-month continuing resolution to keep the government open last September. In November, Inspire only got half its funding, as has happened with past continuing resolutions. After Congress funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year in another continuing resolution on March 14, Jorge Castillo, CEO of Inspire Development Centers, assumed the rest of the money would come through shortly after, as it always has.
But by late April, it still hadn’t shown up, and the center was getting close to running out of money. It couldn’t get an answer about when, if ever, the rest would arrive; earlier that month, President Trump’s administration closed the regional Head Start office that served it. “Typically they would say, ‘Hey, it’s on its way,’” Castillo said. “There was no communication, which left us all uncertain.”
Castillo had no option but to shut down temporarily. “Obviously you cannot incur costs with no guarantee of payment,” he said. Head Start programs don’t have the luxury of building up a reserve of government funding; they have to spend the money they draw down within three days. He had nothing available to keep his program going.
That left 412 children with no school to go to, and his 74 employees without work. “For children and families, it’s devastating,” he said. Some of the children who attend have severe disabilities and get specialized care. Kids get meals. Meanwhile, Castillo worried he’d start to lose his highly qualified and certified staff to other jobs.
The program stayed closed for three days until finally, on a Friday, Castillo received an email at 7 a.m. from someone at the Office of Head Start he had never heard of apologizing for the delay and assuring him the money would be coming. A few hours later, he got a letter confirming that the funds would be awarded. He was able to reopen the following Monday.
“It’s the uncertainty, it kills us,” Castillo said. “If there’s ever been anything that’s certain about living in the United States, it’s that our government tends to be very dependable, and it seems very undependable now.”
CONGRESS HAS FULLY FUNDED HEAD START through the end of this fiscal year, yet multiple signs point to the Trump administration withholding at least some of the money programs rely on. According to an analysis by Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-WA) office, as of April 15 the federal government had sent Head Start programs nearly $1 billion less than it had at the same point last year, representing a 37 percent annualized cut. The money continued to flow relatively normally through February, and then in March and April it started to fall off a cliff.
Murray and 41 other senators sent a letter on April 24 to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, accusing the administration of taking “actions to withhold and delay funding.” The administration is legally obligated to disburse the $12.3 billion Head Start funding Congress appropriated for the fiscal year, the senators noted. “There is no justifiable reason for the delay in funding we have seen over the last two months, and you have refused to offer any kind of explanation,” they wrote.
The ACLU and four state Head Start associations then sued the administration on April 28, accusing it of launching “a series of unrelenting attacks” that it alleges are “unlawful acts in service of an unlawful goal: to eliminate Head Start in blatant contravention of Congressional directives.”
At least some programs haven’t gotten all they’re owed by the federal government. A Head Start director in Kentucky who wished to stay anonymous said that, when her annual grant due on May 1 finally came through, it was for only half of the prescribed amount. The notice she got said, “Subject to the availability of a fiscal year 2025 appropriation, the balance of funds will be awarded at a later date.” It’s the first time in her 13 years of this job that she hasn’t received her full grant, she said. Her Head Start program specialist, the person who usually answers all of her questions, can’t tell her why she only got half of the money.
One cause of delays seems to be the firing of Head Start staff that approved grants.
If funding doesn’t show up by October, she will likely have to only offer full-day programming to the highest-need students. The money she received last month will fully run out by the end of October; she worries that, at that point, she’ll have to tell all the parents that they’ll need to find child care elsewhere.
Katie Hamm, who served as deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the Office for the Administration for Children & Families under President Joe Biden, knows of other programs that have also only received half of their grant amount, although she couldn’t quantify how many are in that situation. Given that Head Start received a full-year appropriation in March’s continuing resolution, “it’s very unclear to me why 50 percent awards would be made at this time,” she said.
For other grantees, money is coming through, but with huge delays that cause significant problems like what Inspire Development Centers experienced.
When I spoke to Thanh Bui-Duquette, director of the Western Dairyland Head Start program in Wisconsin, in late April, she still hadn’t received a notice of award for the annual grant renewal due on May 1. “Normally it’s a pretty seamless process,” she said. She would be in regular touch with a program specialist, who would keep her updated on her grant moving through various stages. But no one is assigned to her program, and she has received very little communication. Finally, on April 25, she received the notice of award.
Western Dairyland has nine Head Start centers, mostly in rural communities; three of the centers are the only licensed child care provider in the entire community. “There’s no other provider available, no other place for children to go,” Bui-Duquette said.
Bui-Duquette has been a Head Start director for 13 years through many different administrations. She’s experienced a number of government shutdowns. “This by far has been the hardest year for me,” she said. “The level of anxiety has never been this high.”
One cause of delays seems to be the firing of Head Start staff that approved grants. On April 1, the Trump administration closed five Head Start regional offices, in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Many programs whose offices closed haven’t been reassigned to another one. As of late April, seven programs in Washington hadn’t been reassigned, according to Joel Ryan, executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP.
“If you take all of these people off the job intentionally, you’re going to slow down grants going out to Head Start programs,” Ryan said. “Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what ended up happening.”
When we spoke on April 24, Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, said three programs were still waiting to find out if they would indeed receive money they were expecting on May 1. The money did eventually come through for all of them, but one program didn’t get notice until the morning of May 1. Similarly, in Oregon at least five programs hadn’t received their May 1 grants as of April 25, although the money eventually arrived.
“I talk to people in tears daily who don’t know if their funding is coming,” Hamm said.
In the past, because government money was so reliable, Head Start programs could seek a line of credit if a grant was delayed. But now, banks are unwilling to give them out. Many programs face legal requirements about giving staff a certain amount of notice of layoffs, and some have had to hand out pink slips while waiting for funds. Even if they don’t have to go through with the layoffs, staff may decide to leave anyway. “There will be people who lose staff because of this uncertainty,” Hamm said. Then there are parents who may decide not to enroll for next school year because of all the chaos.
There are other programs that, like Inspire Development Centers, were supposed to get full-year grant amounts late last year but only got half, while being promised they’d get the rest after a continuing resolution passed. For November grantees, the money would only stretch to the end of April; in early April, Mauer had programs saying they still hadn’t gotten funding, although toward the end of the month it had come through. December grantees, whose money runs out at the end of May, are seeing money “starting to trickle in.”
One program that was due to get money on January 1 had to wait until the evening of April 30 to get the rest of the funds, Hamm said. These problems can’t be pinned on regional office closures since the money should have already gone out before they were announced, she added.
THE UNCERTAINTY ISN’T OVER. Although May 1 Head Start grantees appear to have gotten at least some of the funding they were expecting, the same waiting game is now starting for those whose funding will come due on June 1 and July 1.
Jessica Lara, assistant director of a Head Start program in Yakima, Washington, is due for a grant renewal by July 1. She was recently told by someone at the Office of Head Start to expect a funding delay that could mean not receiving a notice of award by June 30. “We let them know we’re going to have to close the program” in that case, she said.
Closing in July would mean leaving the many parents at her program who work in agriculture with no child care, right at the peak of harvesting season. “If 500 kids don’t have safe, reliable child care, that’s a lot of parents who can’t go harvest fruit or go work in packing,” she said.
She’ll also have to notify staff on June 1 that the closure is coming if she hasn’t heard anything. She recently met with staff to talk about what it would mean if the money didn’t come through—most likely layoffs. That’s prompted most employees to look for work elsewhere, and some have even had interviews. Lara expects actual departures could hit next month. If she loses people, it will mean “we’re all picking up more with less staff.” She can’t post job openings to find new employees if she doesn’t know whether and when her funding will arrive.
Before this year, even if a grant due on July 1 didn’t arrive until July 5, “we never worried,” Lara said. There was communication that it was coming and she could count on it. Now, “we can’t be assured anything might come.”
All Head Start programs have now been subjected to “defend the spend” procedures by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation.
Delays are also occurring when Head Start programs try to draw down the money they’ve been awarded to pay rent or make payroll. All Head Start programs have now been subjected to “defend the spend” procedures by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation, an extra step Musk has instituted across government contracts. When programs go into the payment management system to make a drawdown, they see an extra box asking them to justify the money.
At first, there was no information about what was required or expected; some programs thought the requests for information were spam. Then the Office of Head Start sent an email, shared with the Prospect, explaining that as part of implementing an executive order Trump signed in February, there was a new “mandatory field” in the system that “requires justification from your organization explaining the purpose of the payment.” Federal agencies would then review the justifications and “either approve them or request more detail”; if more detail is needed, programs receive an email from defendthespend@hhs.gov directing them to a doge.gov website.
The email warned programs that processing times “may be different than those experienced previously” and told them to submit payment requests earlier. But that’s a difficult thing for programs to pull off: Once they draw down funds, they can only hold onto them for three days.
Head Start programs report that money that used to show up within 24 hours is taking as long as ten days. Lara said it’s caused a lot of confusion. “We’re kind of guessing” as to what should be included in the box, she said. “We’ve been ChatGTPing nine ways to say the same thing.”
No one the Prospect spoke to had heard of any programs being denied a drawdown request or only receiving part of what they requested; Hamm had heard of one program that was initially denied but, after submitting more information, received its funds. But the “human capital” wasted on the procedure “is exorbitant and using a lot of time and energy that could be spent doing programmatic things,” Lara said. “We’re just now spinning our wheels trying to guess at what they do and don’t want us to do to get the funding.”
Bui-Duquette’s program was asked to submit more information after including the extra justification in her request to draw down money from the system for payroll, supplies, and transportation for children and their families, but she doesn’t know why. The additional requests have meant waiting days instead of getting the money the day after she requests it, as had previously been the case. Before, she never worried about whether the money would or wouldn’t come through. Now, “I’m holding my breath every time we request funds,” she said.
Experts and programs say the requests are entirely duplicative. Before any Head Start program can request to draw down money in the system, it will have applied for a grant and, as part of that application, submitted a budget. That application and budget then gets scored by a review panel. Every budget is approved by the Office of Head Start annually, and each program also gets audited each year.
“There are already a lot of checks and balances in place within the normal Head Start standard procedure,” Hamm said. She wondered how the “defend the spend” directive could comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act, which is meant to reduce duplicative processes and also allow for public input into new ones.
EVERYONE IS NERVOUS THAT ALL of the funding headaches and delays are not accidental, but purposeful. After Project 2025, the conservative blueprint the administration has been following, called for eliminating Head Start during the campaign, a leaked version of Trump’s upcoming budget proposal to Congress called for zeroing the program out. The Office of Management and Budget then issued a memo directing HHS to make sure this year’s funds are “made available to close out the program.” The so-called “skinny” budget Trump released on May 2 didn’t include any information about Head Start.
Ryan sees all of the administration’s actions, together, as “an intentional way to kneecap the Head Start program.”
Inspire Development Centers, the Washington program that temporarily shut down in April, is still not on firm ground. Its five-year funding cycle is up at the end of this year, and it will be submitting a funding request to start another five-year cycle by the end of August. Castillo has been hearing from other programs that he should expect a significant delay in getting any response. “We’re concerned we’re not going to hear from them at all,” Castillo said.
If Castillo doesn’t hear anything from the government by November 30, he will have to immediately shut down again, and not just his Head Start program. He also runs programs funded by Washington state’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, and he doesn’t think he can keep them going without Head Start funding. “We’ll be completely pulled out of these small communities we’re in,” he said. “It would be extremely devastating.” There aren’t any alternatives for families enrolled at the majority of his centers; it’s the only option in town. “You’re just turning your back completely on kids.”
