Excerpts
...
Nearly 90% of rural counties in the United States have Head Start programs, which are funded with federal dollars and run by public or private agencies including schools and non-profits. Almost half of the 716,000 children Head Start serves live in rural congressional districts, compared with just 22% in urban districts.
...
In many rural communities, the program is not just about education and childcare. Head Start is particularly crucial to the survival of these local areas in a way it isn’t in larger urban areas with more diverse economies. The program not only employs local residents; it also supports other local businesses as centers pay rent, buy food from local farmers and grocers, use local mechanics to repair buses, hire local technicians to service kitchens, and pay local carpenters to outfit centers.
Head Start was created in 1965 to provide early learning, family support and health services to low-income families, part of Lyndon B Johnson’s “war on poverty”. The program has long enjoyed bipartisan support: 74% of Trump voters and 86% of Democrats said earlier this year that they support funding the program, according to a survey conducted on behalf of the advocacy group First Five Years Fund.
Although Head Start has survived elimination so far this year, its local centers are still trying to recover from what many say feels like death by a thousand federal cuts since Trump took office – with more likely to come.
In early February, many Head Start programs were caught up in a federal funding freeze. Then the Trump administration fired about 20% of the program’s federal staff.
This spring, some rural programs shut down because the administration delayed Head Start payments in some regions. In April, the administration abruptly closed five regional Head Start offices, cutting off a main source for support for programs. Just three months after that, the administration announced that undocumented immigrant children, long eligible for Head Start, could no longer participate.
In the midst of all that turmoil, some local and regional Head Start programs have begun laying off employees. At the start of the year, the government withheld nearly $1bn in funding from local programs, a move the Government Accountability Office called illegal in July. While the money has since been distributed, in the interim several Head Start programs closed temporarily, and a few have told some staff they will be let go.
...
Littrell, the former Head Start parent who now works for the program, hopes residents will realize programs such as Head Start are critical for communities like hers and vote for politicians who will try to protect them. From her early years as a teen mom, she said, she knows how easy it is to end up in a situation where a family needs some help to move forward.
...