HHS Closes Half of Head Start Regional Offices

On April 3, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Early Childhood Development, Laurie Todd-Smith, released a statement announcing the closure of half of the Head Start Regional offices throughout the United States, reducing the total from 10 to five.  The offices that are closing include Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco,  and Seattle.  The offices that are staying open are Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City, and Denver. Todd-Smith cites President Trump’s Executive Order issued on February 26 for the change.

“Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy recently announced a major restructuring in accordance with President Trump’s Executive Order ‘Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,’”  Todd-Smith wrote in the announcement. “This restructuring will serve multiple goals without impacting critical services, ultimately saving taxpayers $1.8 billion per year.”

In her announcement, Todd-Smith insists that this won’t disrupt services, writing that, “OHS staff remain fully committed to supporting Head Start grant recipients… This restructuring will not impact the critical services you rely on.”

The National Head Start Association (NHSA) issued a press release immediately after the announcement, expressing their opposition to the change and their fears about disruptions in service.

“Regional office staff… play an integral role in ensuring that the services to eligible children and families are reliable, high-quality, and fiscally sound,” NHSA wrote.

Moreover, NHSA reiterated the fact that this change won’t even save that much money, stating that  less than one percent of the federal Head Start budget is spent on staffing for federal and regional employees.

“We urge the administration to reconsider these actions until a plan has been created and shared widely,” they wrote.

Since inauguration, uncertainty and fear have been rampant throughout the Head Start workforce.  Within the first couple of weeks after inauguration, some agencies were unable to draw on their appropriated funds when the Trump Administration announced a federal funding freeze. The administration eventually backed down on the freeze preceding a court order, but not before the entire Head Start market had been rattled to its core.

“The funding freeze has been blocked for now, but the [Executive Order] did part of what it was meant to do–make people panic,” one commenter wrote on the ECE Professionals subreddit at the time.  “I’m working through my own fear and anger so that I can be there to reassure parents.”

One needs to look no further than the Head Start Facebook page for how much things have changed. The page went completely dark for two months starting the day of the inauguration. Recently, OHS staff started posting again in earnest, but whereas they used to post once/day, now they only post occasionally, with the last post nearly a month ago.

This latest upheaval with the closing of regional offices is the first reduction targeted specifically at the Head Start program, and not part of a larger, blanket federal workforce reduction or funding freeze. For many in Head Start, this is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Indeed, since we started writing this blog, more details have come to light that we need to include, which begs the question: Is Project 2025’s plan for Head Start coming true?

Back in July of 2024, we wrote about Project 2025, the conservative policy proposal from the conservative think-tank, The Heritage Foundation. In it, the authors did not mince words about their plans for the Head Start program.  They want to shutter the program.  Not to convert it to a state-run initiative through federal block grants, but to completely eliminate it.

“Given its unaddressed crisis of rampant abuse and lack of positive outcomes, this program should be eliminated along with the entire OHS,” the proposal states.

We talked about all the ways that Project 2025 was wrong in its assessment of Head Start, so we won’t go into detail on that right now. But either way, their intent couldn’t be clearer. In their minds, Head Start has got to go.

Lo and behold, just a couple weeks after the announcement about Head Start regional offices closing, the Trump Administration’s draft budget proposal was leaked to the press. It has been widely reported to completely eliminate Head Start funding.

“A draft of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year calls for ending support for Head Start, which provides early childhood education and other services to nearly 800,000 kids,” CNN reported.

As many news agencies have discussed, this is just a draft budget proposal. It’s not the law. Congress still has the power of the purse.

“Trump does not have the power to defund the programs on his own,”  CNN explained. “Those decisions are up to Congress, which often does not follow a president’s budget recommendations.”

But even without cutting off funding entirely, the administration can do a lot within its power to reduce the effectiveness of a federal program. And that may be the whole point. Consider the closing of these regional offices (which, by the way, are all in blue states while the ones they kept are mostly in red states, save for one. But I digress).  By reducing federal support staff to anemic levels and implementing burdensome reporting or bureaucratic requirements, grantees are left without support and without clarification. Not to mention the slow-walking of funding, which is already forcing some centers to close. Over time, the program can flounder, allowing some to brand it as a failure and remove funding completely. It’s something many conservatives have been itching to do for decades quite frankly.

The end result would be catastrophic for the communities that rely on Head Start. Head Start provides critical services to families in poverty throughout the United States. And it allows nearly a million parents to remain employed with access to free, dependable childcare.

For now, the National Head Start Association encourages all supporters of Head Start to send an email to the President and your members of Congress to reject defunding of Head Start.  Head Start’s funding has been in danger before. More times than I can remember, to be quite honest. But this might just be one of the most existential threats it has ever faced. Now’s the time to act to save Head Start.

Tags: funding, project 2025