It’s the first sunny day of the week at the Child & Family Centers of Excellence in Waukesha. Tiny students gleefully push dump truck toys on the stone pathway around the playground.
It’s almost summer time.
This school year has been particularly tough for the students and families at this center. It unexpectedly closed in January for five days after the Trump administration froze funding for Head Start programs across the country.
At this nonprofit center, at least 97% of the budget is made up of Head Start funding, which is designed to help students from under-resourced communities. Ninety percent of the students in the Head Start program are living at or below the poverty line.
During the closure, parents scrambled to find childcare. One family drove their kids to Kentucky to stay with extended family so that the parents could go to work back in Wisconsin. Two children left the center and never came back after it reopened.
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Even though the childcare center did reopen its doors, it still remains in limbo.
The Trump administration ended up releasing Head Start funding but closed the regional office in Chicago that oversees Head Start operations across Wisconsin. After the administration asked Congress to cut funding for the program in April, it then flip flopped again, and included funding for Head Start in its budget summary released earlier this month.
If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is. If Head Start loses funding, there is no backstop of grant or private funding at the Child & Family Centers of Excellence in Waukesha. That’s according to Director for Operations Bill Walsh, who explained what would happen if funding dries up.
“We will close, and at least 72 employees will lose their jobs. And the families of 225 three, four and five year olds and 84 additional children infant through, up to, age three will lose services," he says. "That means food, that means transportation, that means childcare.”
Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin toured the center in Waukesha last week and met with students who are enrolled in the Head Start program.
The Democrat called Head Start "a lifeline" for Wisconsin’s most vulnerable students.
“This chaos didn’t have to happen, but this administration has created chaos by these funding freezes," she said. "And this was not the only Head Start in Wisconsin that experienced that.”
Now, Baldwin says she and other members of Congress need to make sure Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. makes good on his promise to include funding for Head Start in the forthcoming budget.
"We’re going to keep his feet to the fire in terms of his commitment to Head Start. And on a number of other aspects of that budget. They gave no detail at all," Baldwin says. "So later this month we should receive a lot more detail and we’ll have a lot more questions.”
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Inside the Child & Family Centers of Excellence, around 225 students attend full-day childcare and another 84 receive in-home care funded by Head Start. Students play outside, participate in small group activities, make artwork, sing songs and work on skills like brushing their teeth and washing their hands.
They’re also extremely curious about the world around them, including when a WUWM reporter shows up on the playground with a microphone.
Activities provided by Head Start are building blocks for young children of all backgrounds to be ready to begin kindergarten. That’s according to Dr. Phil Fisher, an early childhood expert and head of the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford University.
He says his research shows that Head Start is essential infrastructure, not just for child care, but for economic stability, access to healthcare, and long-term opportunity for families.
“Children who are in Head Start are in situations where it makes it possible for their parents to work and to earn income, which is critical for the employment sector, it’s critical for the economy," Fisher says. "And so we see so many ways in which this program, that’s been around for so many decades, has played a critical role in securing the wellbeing of the future of young children in this country.”
Across Wisconsin, childcare costs are soaring, and centers are still short on staff. In Waukesha, for example, full-time private childcare can be upwards of $1,000 per month for a single child. That’s impossible for a parent to afford if they’re living at or near the poverty line.
That's where Head Start comes in. It’s free for families whose incomes qualify. This year, a family of four could qualify for Head Start if their combined income was under around $32,000 per year. For a single parent, the income limit is around $21,000.
As Trump administration waffles on Head Start funding, educators remain in limbo
The money for Head Start is continuing to flow right now.
But Walsh, the operations director at the Waukesha center, says he and the center’s educators don’t really know how to plan for the upcoming year.
“How do you plan and how do you staff, when you don’t know if you’re going to be in business?" he asked.
For now, they’ll be holding their breath.
Katherine Kokal is the education reporter at 89.7 WUWM - Milwaukee's NPR. Have a question about schools or an education story idea? You can reach her at kokal@uwm.edu
