RICHMOND — As California preschoolers enjoy spring break, many Head Start providers say they’re feeling some relief — at least for the moment.
A controversial spending deal ironed out by Congress will preserve federal grant funding for the program at last year’s levels for the next six months, and there are promising trends in places like Contra Costa County, where teacher vacancies are declining and student rosters are nearing capacity for the first time since July 2020.
And yet, Head Start staffers are also feeling a creeping sense of existential dread about future budget cuts and regulatory changes that could affect disadvantaged preschoolers across the Bay Area.
“It’s just the nature of the beast,” Melanee Cottrill, executive director of Head Start California, said in an interview. She said she’s encouraged that operations seem to have stabilized, especially after prior spending freezes erroneously impacted some preschool providers. And there are no indications that Head Start — which served 778,420 children, pregnant women and families across the nation in 2023 — will be targeted for federal cuts.
“The broad, overarching challenge is all the uncertainty,” said Cottrill.
Clarity will remain elusive until lawmakers actually start negotiating the next fiscal year’s budget, including money that has historically been earmarked for 80,000 youth enrolled in California.
“Even in areas as relatively close-knit and compact as the Bay Area, every program is a little different to meet the needs of the community — whatever those are — in the places where they are,” Cottrill said. “Regardless of what kind of organization you are, losing any chunk of your funding would be a challenge.”
Another challenge is that the money that was approved March 14 won’t help employers keep up with ongoing cost of living increases and other inflated expenses, in addition to potential roadblocks involving labor contracts, building leases, snack vendors and other upcoming bills.
One regional Head Start program — run out of Santa Clara County’s Office of Education — sent out pink slips in mid-March after unexpected delays to grants jeopardized hiring without any funding guarantees.
Contra Costa County, which has long boasted of its legacy as the largest provider of preschool within its borders, reported that 3,650 children — a majority living in low-income Latino and primarily Spanish-speaking households, including more than 70% in single-parent families — received subsidized preschool services in February.
Last month, 98% of the early education program’s federally funded slots in Contra Costa were full, according to administrators, while enrollment hit 91% for its state-funded openings — reaching key benchmarks at the same time teacher vacancy rates dropped to 12% in February.
However, trepidation loomed during the Board of Supervisor’s most recent monthly update about Contra Costa County’s 13 Head Start and Early Head Start sites, which are largely concentrated in low-income communities near Richmond and Brentwood.
Marla Stuart, director of Contra Costa County’s Employment and Human Services Department (EHSD), said a flurry of executive actions, federal announcements and other policies have already impacted Head Start’s operations since President Donald Trump kicked off his second term in January, including threats to reject any grants that reference or promote efforts to bolster diversity, equity and inclusion, commonly known as “DEI.”
She specifically highlighted Project 2025 — a conservative policy blueprint that pushes “trauma-inducing” cuts to federal bureaucrats and civil servants, including several policies already implemented by the Trump administration — which asserted that Head Start’s $11 billion federal office is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and should be eliminated.
Contra Costa County needs $25.7 million to keep this program up and running next year, according to the annual grant renewal application and budget revisions the Board of Supervisors approved last week. Scott Thompson, EHSD’s interim community services bureau director, said the application is for effectively the same amount of grant funding it requested last year, which would allow 1,200 children to again be enrolled July 1.
Government and nonprofit leaders alike say there’s been no indication that the federal government has active plans to gut its 60-year-old early education program, which was founded as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”
Numerous legal experts also agree that unless Congress explicitly cuts Head Start, that categorical grant money isn’t going anywhere.
But Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia doubled down on his belief that elected officials have an obligation to be transparent about what’s potentially at stake.
“I don’t take the ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach,” Gioia said during Tuesday’s board meeting. “We’re not going to know until the end, but if we want to advocate to say, ‘here’s the impact of these cuts,’ no one is stopping me from talking about that.”
County Administrator Monica Nino said on Tuesday that the impacts tied to federal budget and policy decisions — across all departments — will be presented during upcoming April budget hearings.
Most Head Start programs in California are run by nonprofits and school districts, but Contra Costa County’s arrangement is unique — a majority of its programs are run by staff within the county’s Community Services Bureau, alongside a handful of sites operated by community-based partners.
In neighboring Alameda County, children can attend Head Start preschool through Kidango, the YMCA and a handful of other nonprofit organizations, in addition to one run by the city of Oakland. The Santa Clara County Office of Education handles all Head Start programming down in the South Bay, while two nonprofits, Izzi Early Education and Peninsula Family Service, serve San Mateo County.
Regardless of classroom structure, these sites run on razor-thin margins that rely heavily on federal funding to supplement other state and local revenues.
Even if the federal Head Start program is preserved, Gioia said local dollars wouldn’t be able to backfill anticipated cutbacks in other grant-funded services that would indirectly impact local families with preschoolers, such as nutrition and Medicaid.
“I’ve got lists of where possible funding impacts can occur, and I think we have a responsibility to talk about that,” Gioia said. “We’re not creating fear, we’re talking about reality.”
