Tag: child

  • How to Expand Family Child Care in NC from CCR&R Team – The 74

    How to Expand Family Child Care in NC from CCR&R Team – The 74


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    State legislators from both parties want to expand family child care — the home-based sector of licensed child care, which has shrunk by more than a third since 2018. Both the House and Senate budget proposals include pilots to open new programs to meet the needs of families and employers.

    For the past two years, a team from the nonprofit Southwestern Child Development Commission (SWCDC) has done just that, creating North Carolina’s first statewide system of support for family child care. In the past year, the organization has helped launch 27 new family child care programs, 20 of which are open, creating at least 160 new slots for children. Two are the first family child care programs in their counties.

    Since September 2023, the team has awarded start-up grants to another 26 programs and business sustainability grants to 38 programs. It has created the first statewide family child care mentorship program, regional communities of practice, and a marketing campaign that has garnered interest from more than 200 prospective providers since April.

    The funding to do this work — from a state legislative pilot in the 2023 budget and a state contract through the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) — ends at the end of June.

    As state leaders ask how to improve child care access and affordability, the project’s lessons should carry forward, said Daniel Bates, the statewide project’s manager.

    “I just really felt like we’ve done something here, and I hope that, no matter what, it still continues, because family child care is so incredibly important,” Bates said. “And they are part of early childhood education.”

    ‘People that will be around for a while’

    Expanding family child care takes one-on-one support for new providers who often bring a passion for children but little knowledge of the complex regulations and business challenges that come with starting and operating a program, the project leaders said. It also requires funding.

    In 2024, SWCDC, a nonprofit focused on early care and education based in western North Carolina, was awarded $525,000 from the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) from legislative pilot funding to expand access to family child care. The project’s expected output was to help 18 programs get started. Instead, it has helped launch 27 programs by awarding grants to cover start-up costs.

    The grants ranged from $5,000 to $20,000 depending on the providers’ needs and the strategic goals of the project. The average grant was about $13,000.

    Providers also spent their own money to open their programs outside of the grants. A survey of some of the providers found that most had spent between $1,000 and $5,000 before receiving grants to prepare their homes and buy materials.

    The new providers are in 19 counties. In Alleghany and Montgomery counties, grant recipients will be the only family child care providers in their counties. Two providers speak Spanish fluently, according to the project leaders. At least 18 have college degrees. Four of the new providers were under 30 years old. Six were in their 30s; 10 were in their 40s.

    “These are people that will be around for a while,” said Vickie Ansley, SWCDC’s Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) regional programs manager and family child care in-home program activity coordinator.

    Danielle Dixon wakes up students from nap time at Helen Cole’s Day Care. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    That grant funding was layered onto a larger statewide family child care project the organization has been leading since February 2023 through a separate $3 million contract with DCDEE from the CCDF, the federal funding stream that helps states raise the quality of child care and helps working families afford it.

    The statewide project had many components, including start-up grants of up to $10,000 and business grants of up to $5,000 for access to business training, software, or devices to manage programs. It provided 64 professional development workshops to providers on a range of issues. It also created a framework for family child care substitute pools and a database of zoning contacts and information.

    Hands-on support from regional consultants

    The crux of the project, however, was all about hands-on support and community building, the project leaders said. The project funded 17 family child care consultants who reached 477 providers in 73 counties with coaching and consultation.

    The consultants, trained in the specifics of owning and operating a family child care program, were embedded in the 14 regional CCR&R hubs covering all 100 counties.

    “We’re talking about people located in those communities,” Ansley said. “They know the (providers), or they know somebody who knows them.”

    Helen Cole, a family child care provider in Taylortown, says the grants she received from Southwestern Child Development Commission helped her buy high-quality materials. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    The PDG contract is in process but will be awarded to Acelero Charitable Foundation “in collaboration with multiple agencies that support family child care.” It will focus on increasing quality and family engagement, the spokesperson said.

    DCDEE employs licensing consultants who meet with all types of potential child care owners to begin the licensure process. The licensing consultants began recommending reaching out to the regional family child care consultants to new providers.

    The family child care consultants then could provide knowledge specific to family child care, dedicate time and energy to decipher the complexities of starting and sustaining a business, and offer support that was independent from regulatory oversight and compliance. Some of the consultants were former family child care providers themselves.

    “Prior to that, if an agency had capacity, then they provided support,” Bates said. “The services were somewhat limited, whereas this was full 100% dedication for family child care.”

    The regional consultants received business training to advise providers on budget planning, financial reports, marketing, and recruiting and retaining staff.

    Kathleen Hoffler, a regional consultant at the Partnership for Children of Cumberland County who once owned a family child care home, described the role as her “dream job.”

    Hoffler said she has helped providers take better care of their businesses, their children, and themselves. She encouraged providers to take time off and to reach out for help.

    “If you’re having issues with enrollment, if you’re having issues with collecting payments from parents, if you’re having behavior issues with kids or you’re worried that one of your kids might need some developmental screening, and you don’t have anybody to talk that out with, it’s real easy to get discouraged and possibly decide it’s not for you and you’re going to close your program,” Hoffler said.

    The family child care consultants connected providers to the pilot grant opportunities and helped them budget what they needed and how they should spend the funding.

    Since the consultants were embedded in CCR&R agencies, they could connect providers with a variety of professional development opportunities and resources.

    And they connected providers to mentors — seasoned family child care providers who provided a listening ear and advice on overcoming obstacles — and to communities of practice, regional teams that met to share ideas and support one another.

    Annette Anderson-Samuels, owner of Phenomenal Kids Child Care Services, a family child care home in Kings Mountain, was one of those mentors. She said her advice to two new providers on how to advertise their programs kept them from closing. She recently helped a provider navigate a tough conversation with parents who were not following her policies.

    “It’s to help each other become better at what we do as child care providers,” Anderson-Samuels said.

    There were 22 mentors and 44 mentees across the state. In his decades working in early childhood, Bates said the group has been a standout.

    “They’ve crossed county lines to go help each other in person,” he said. “The interest and the willingness, wanting to improve themselves, is really out there if they have the opportunity to do that.”

    ‘The lost segment of early childhood education’

    The number of family child care programs, child care businesses within a residence, has fallen by about 36% since 2018, compared with an overall 15% decline in all types of licensed child care.

    Eighty-five percent of licensed child care closures from February 2020 to June 2024 were home-based programs.

    As a generation of providers age out of the work, a lack of awareness, funding, and support — along with increased regulation — has kept new providers from entering the field, project leaders said.

    The team was intentional about listening to providers’ experiences and needs before developing a system of support.

    Helen Cole said her family child care home has better equipment and provides higher-quality care because of the support she received from the Southwestern Child Development Commission’s family child care projects. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Many brought up the low rates that family child care providers receive per child to participate in the state’s subsidy program. These rates, the state has found, do not cover the full cost of providing child care in any setting. Home-based programs receive lower amounts per child than centers. And providers in rural and low-income areas often receive lower rates than those in higher-income counties.

    In rural areas where market rates are lower, “even though we need family child care in those communities desperately, market rates are a hindrance,” said Lori Jones-Ruff, SWCDC’s regional programs manager.

    Jones-Ruff also sits on Gov. Josh Stein’s Task Force on Child Care and Early Education, where members have discussed the need for higher subsidy rates and a statewide floor rate that would level the playing field among counties. Research has shown the geographic disparities are wider than place-based differences in cost.

    “That’s not just a center issue,” she said. “It’s for family child care as well.”

    Low funding from public sources and private tuition leads to low compensation for family child care professionals. The median wage for home-based providers in 2023 was $10.20.

    The team also heard about obstacles due to HOA rules and zoning regulations. They found that local ordinances were putting up barriers to new programs in some places. Septic tank requirements were among the most common and most expensive problems.

    “(Providers) have recognized, ‘I don’t really need to run to Raleigh; some of the challenges I have are really just in my own backyard, and I just need to talk to my town or county,’” Bates said.

    The team heard about the isolation many providers feel, being alone in their homes all day without a network to air ideas or lean on when challenges arise. Providers said they did not feel respected or supported by the state.

    “Historically, there was a huge emphasis put on center-based care in North Carolina,” Jones-Ruff said. “Homes did not feel that they were as valued and as supported as center-based. And so there was a period of time where they really felt like they were kind of the lost segment of early childhood education in North Carolina.”

    So the team built a strategy based on both funding and relationships.

    ‘Like a prayer answered’

    For Helen Cole, that assistance and funding was key to opening her family child care home in Taylortown in Moore County.

    “I just feel like this wouldn’t have been possible without the support and the funds,” said Cole, who recently earned her four-star license to care for children from infancy to 12 years old at Helen Cole’s Day Care.

    She received more than $17,000 to start her program from the legislative pilot funding. She bought new outside equipment, furniture, dramatic play sets, age-appropriate toys and books, a new kitchen faucet, a state-approved curriculum, and a new laptop.

    Cole heard about the potential grant funding for start-up costs from the state licensing consultant. She was also connected with Hoffler.

    Students at Helen Cole’s program work on their counting skills. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Cole was excited to open after hearing about a local demand for second-shift care. After retiring as a substitute teacher in her local school district, she needed more income and was eager to fill a community need.

    But after her initial meeting with a licensing consultant, she received a long checklist of everything she had to do. She said she felt overwhelmed.

    “It was just so much information,” she said. “There are things on the website, but how do you adjust it for your day care?”

    Plus, Cole had experience helping in her sister’s child care program, but she did not know the ins and outs of operating a small business. Even with a background in accounting, she knew the role would be challenging. So she reached out to Hoffler for an in-person meeting.

    “It was like a prayer answered,” Cole said. “She broke it down for me.”

    Hoffler helped Cole navigate the tough decisions that come with operating a business from your home, such as how much living space she was willing to sacrifice and what renovations were needed. And she helped Cole create a budget to apply for grant funding through the legislative pilot. She gave her ideas on high-quality and age-appropriate materials.

    She also connected Cole with a mentor, helped her with business skills, and connected her with other resources through the Smart Start partnership.

    Hoffler has helped her advertise her program and hold on through the ups and downs of enrollment, Cole said. Because she needed to hire another teacher, her niece Danielle Dixon, Cole said she is breaking even but has not started making a profit or been able to pay herself. She said she has been advised that it can take nine months to a year.

    She said low subsidy rates and parents’ inability to afford her private rates have also been financially challenging. She serves one student whose parents are both working, making too much to qualify for a subsidy, but cannot afford her private rate of $200 per week. She only charges that family $85 per week.

    Danielle Dixon, a teacher at Helen Cole’s Day Care, has worked in child care for 11 years. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Dixon, who has been working in child care professionally for 11 years but informally since she was 16 years old, has both of her children enrolled at the program. Dixon said her grandmother and mother, as well as three of her aunts, have worked in child care. She decided to partner with her aunt, Cole, to return to working with young children in a creative, exploratory environment after working in public schools.

    Helen Cole’s Day Care opened in December in the home she was raised in, and where her mother used to take care of children whose parents were at risk of losing custody.

    “All of our lives, we’ve had other children here,” Cole said.

    Both Dixon and Hoffler have helped Cole strengthen her understanding and practice of early childhood care and education. Her program’s philosophy is based on relationships, exploration, and emotional and social development. Then academic foundations are added.

    “It’s that give and take between you and this child,” Hoffler said. “They’re going to learn more from you if you are actively engaging with them and talking to them throughout the day, than they’ll ever learn if you give them a coloring sheet and try to teach them how to stay in the lines. There are no lines in early childhood.”

    “That was a wow moment,” Cole said. “I understand that we have to have a curriculum, and we do, but the biggest thing is for them to develop on their own.”

    It is this one-on-one attention and intimate environment that make family child care appeal to so many parents. Rural children, low-income children, and children of color are more likely to access home-based care than center-based, according to national advocacy and research group Home Grown. It is often more affordable, more convenient and flexible for nontraditional working hours, and more culturally and linguistically relevant to diverse families.

    Inside Helen Cole’s child care program. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Kailyn Green, whose daughter has been at the program for a month, said she toured other programs with open spots but they “didn’t feel right.” Then she visited Cole’s program and did a walk-through.

    “I was like, ‘I’m sold. I’m good,’” Green said.

    A licensed clinical social worker, Green said she has been able to return to work without worrying. She receives texts and videos of her daughter’s days and has been impressed by how much she has progressed, especially with eating more consistently.

    “I love that she truly gets the attention,” she said. “She’s been able to form a relationship with her. It’s been great.”

    Hoffler said she was excited to hear about Cole’s recent accomplishment: earning four out of five stars on the state’s quality rating scale.

    “I’m just so proud of her,” she said. “She handled it like a pro.”

    What’s next?

    There are multiple efforts to build different kinds of supports for family child care. DCDEE said the project with SWCDC taught them that “Family Child Care Homes (FCCHs) would benefit from additional funding, continued community engagement, and professional development to improve quality,” according to a DCDEE spokesperson.

    “FCCHs are a vital part of our state’s early care and learning network, and DCDEE is committed to continuing our support for these small businesses,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

    Though the contract for the statewide project ends on June 30, the spokesperson said the division will continue using CCDF funds and federal funds from the Preschool Development Grant (PDG) Birth through Five to provide business technical assistance and other services to family child care programs.

    The PDG contract is in process but will be awarded to Acelero Charitable Foundation “in collaboration with multiple agencies that support family child care.” It will focus on increasing quality and family engagement, the spokesperson said.

    DCDEE is also contracting with Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill to provide evaluation and coordination of the PDG Elevate FCCH project, which will provide extra subsidy funding to family child care programs to increase wages for providers.

    The House and Senate budget proposals direct DCDEE to use CCDF funds to expand family child care capacity. The House would allocate $7 million over two years for a pilot in three localities, and the Senate would allocate $6 million for a pilot in Alamance, Harnett, and Johnston counties. The funding would go to councils of governments in each of those counties to select a third-party vendor. Both proposals have specific requirements for the chosen vendor, including experience in establishing family child care homes in at least three other states and rural areas, experience in operating a substitute pool in another state, and technology that connects families with providers and includes billing and coaching functions. 

    Meanwhile, Jones-Ruff said SWCDC will continue supporting family child care by retaining a statewide team with organizational funding — and will seek outside funding to continue other aspects of the project. Some of the family child care consultants will continue their work through local CCR&R or Smart Start funding.

    “I can see just the monumental amount of work and the progress that has happened in such a short amount of time,” she said. “We’re not going away.”

    This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • States try to tackle child care shortages — by lowering standards

    States try to tackle child care shortages — by lowering standards

    When this year’s legislative session launched in Idaho, early childhood experts and advocates were hopeful that the state, which has a shortage of child care, would invest more in early learning programs. Instead, lawmakers proposed what may be the most extreme effort yet to deregulate child care in America: The bill called for eliminating state required staff-to-child ratios altogether, instead allowing child care providers to set their own.

    While the effort was met with fierce opposition in the state, it represents a trend gaining momentum in the country. Rather than investing in the struggling child care industry, more than a dozen states have proposed lowering the minimum age to work with children, easing education and training requirements, and raising group sizes and ratios. (Read my December story on this growing deregulation movement. I investigated such efforts in states including Kansas and Iowa.)

    The deregulation measures come at a time when many early childhood programs face federal funding and staffing cuts. Head Start programs were hit by a federal funding freeze and struggled to draw down payments even after the Trump administration announced Head Start was exempt from the freeze. Then, earlier this month, the Trump administration closed five of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) regional offices and placed staff from those offices on leave, threatening support for Head Start, which is overseen by ACF, as well as programs that receive federal child care subsidies. Last week, USA Today reported that President Donald Trump is considering a budget proposal that would eliminate funding for Head Start altogether.

    At the state level, Idaho lawmakers are not the only ones to propose child care deregulation legislation this year. Minnesota lawmakers also issued similar proposals, including increasing family child care capacity limits and relaxing ratios in rural areas. Another bill in the state proposes lowering the age requirement of assistant teachers from 18 to 16. In Kansas, where a lawmaker proposed hiring 14-year-olds to help in child care classrooms in 2023, a new bill aims to reduce training requirements. An Indiana measure would loosen staff-to-child ratios based on the ratios set in neighboring states, and one in North Carolina would increase maximum group sizes for young children. And in Florida, lawmakers have called for an abbreviated inspection plan for some child care programs.

    While deregulation is more common in red states, there have also been some recent efforts to invest in early learning programs that transcend the red-blue divide. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp proposed an additional $14 million aimed at reducing preschool class sizes and $5.5 million to address issues with the state’s child care subsidy program for lower-income families. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun called for more spending to eliminate the state’s waitlist for child care subsidies. And South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster proposed $20 million to continue a program that provides wage supplements to child care workers.

    In Idaho, the deregulation legislation was eventually amended to loosen the state-mandated ratios — without eliminating them altogether. It also forbids municipalities from setting more stringent child care regulations than the state, something that was allowed in the past and allowed cities to set a “higher standard” for programs, said Martin Balben, director of strategic initiatives for the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children.

    “I think municipalities are still kind of reeling with how to confront that reality,” he said. “It remains to be seen how [they] are going to handle their lack of local control in this area moving forward.”

    Experts say while deregulation is nothing new, the recent momentum is troubling. “We absolutely want to make sure that states are not rolling back their health and safety measures,” said Diane Girouard, state policy senior analyst at Child Care Aware of America. “We want to make sure that they’re not compromising children. … There are no quick fixes.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about child care services was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Head Start, the federal child care program for low-income families, is turning 60 this year. Will it make it to 61?

    Head Start, the federal child care program for low-income families, is turning 60 this year. Will it make it to 61?

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Bright morning sun is streaming through her home’s windows as Sandra Dill reads a picture book about penguins to a room full of busy toddlers. While listening, the kids blow kisses, plop in a visitor’s lap, then get up to slide down a small slide.

    Dill has been running a family child care business from her home for 15 years, and every one of her 13 grandchildren has spent time here — currently it’s 20-month-old Nathaniel, who has a puff of curly hair and a gooey grin.

    “My older ones started to call it ‘grandma school,’” she said. Another one of her granddaughters, now a teenager, is returning this summer to help out.

    Four of Dill’s eight available slots are funded through Head Start. This is the federal-to-local program that funds child care and other support for the poorest families in America. (Regular Head Start serves children 3 to 5 years old; Early Head Start is for those under 3.) The program — which began right here in New Haven, Connecticut — is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

    It’s also never been so at risk: First a federal funding freeze hit providers, then a chunk of Head Start federal support staff were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency. On March 27, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was cutting a further 10,000 jobs, and reorganizing the Administration for Children and Families, which administers Head Start. As of April 1, Head Start employees in five of the program’s 10 regions — Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle — had reportedly been laid off, according to a LinkedIn post that day from Katie Hamm, a former official with the federal Administration for Children and Families. Hamm said there does not appear to be a transition plan laying out how Head Start programs in those regions will receive funding and support. Project 2025, the conservative policy handbook organized by the Heritage Foundation, which the Trump administration has been following closely, calls for eliminating Head Start altogether.

    “I think it’s terrible,” Dill said. “I just can’t imagine. It’s already not enough, and if this happens, it’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling.”

    Ed Zigler, the “father of Head Start,” was the son of immigrants from Poland. His father was a peddler and his mother plucked chickens to make a little money, according to Walter Gilliam, executive director of the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute, who counted Zigler as his closest mentor.

    When Zigler was a child, his family made its way to a settlement house in Kansas City, Missouri; these community-based charities offered a two-generation approach, caring for and educating children while also teaching English and job skills to parents and connecting families with medical care and housing help.

    “That made a huge impact on his and his family’s life,” Gilliam said.

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

    As a young psychology professor at Yale, Zigler was hired as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson to help design family programs for the federal War on Poverty. In creating Head Start, he turned to the same two-generation model he grew up with.

    To date, Head Start has served nearly 40 million children. In fiscal year 2023, the Head Start program was funded to serve 778,420 children. The program has always been underfunded: In 2020 Head Start served barely 1 in 10 eligible infants and toddlers and only half of eligible preschoolers. It’s limited to families making under the federal poverty level, which is just $31,200 for a family of four.

    The sand table at Dill’s child care is an opportunity to explore shapes, colors and textures. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report

    Still, for many of the families who do manage to make it through the doors, the program is life-changing.

    “Head Start is in every community in America,” said Cara Sklar, director of early & elementary education policy at the D.C.-based think tank New America. “It’s the original two-generation program, with wraparound support for kids. It’s really held up as a model of quality in early learning.”

    The “wraparound support” for Dill’s Early Head Start families is funded by the United Way of Greater New Haven, and comes via a network for family child care educators called All Our Kin. The network helps mothers enroll in community college and apply for housing subsidies. Dill has had mothers who lived in their cars and one who was living with her mother “six to a room,” she said. She also does regular home visits with families to talk about children’s development and support parents in goals like potty training.

    Thanks to Early Head Start, a nurse, a mental health consultant and a nutritionist all help Dill keep the kids healthy and safe. And the program also provides extra funds she can use to get back up and running if, for example, the furnace needs fixing.

    But Head Start is now facing funding challenges that go far beyond a broken furnace. “The past month has been harrowing for child care providers,” said Carolina Reyes, director of Arco Iris Bilingual Children’s Center, a preschool in Laurel, Maryland, that is a Head Start partner, and also a member of the nationwide advocacy group MomsRising. 

    The first blow to Head Start in this administration was President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order calling for a federal funding freeze. Since Head Start is a direct federal-to-local grant program, even temporary interruptions in funding can cause programs to close their doors.

    “ Programs like mine operate on razor-thin margins,” said Reyes. “I don’t have any reserves to pull from if funding is delayed or slashed.”

    Related: Is Head Start a failure?

    While funding for most programs has resumed, Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said in a recent press conference that as late as the week of Feb. 17, one in four of his programs still had trouble accessing the Head Start payment website. 

    That same week of the 17th, almost 70 Head Start staffers were pink-slipped in the federal government’s sweep of “probationary” employees — about one-fifth of the program’s workforce. One laid-off employee, who didn’t want to give his name because he is still fighting his dismissal and fears reprisal, said he spent five years as a contractor before switching to full time this past summer, which accounted for his probationary status. He wore many hats at Head Start, doing data analytics, working with grant recipients and serving as a liaison for state partners.

    “They say we’re bloated; we could have used two more full-time people,” he said.

    The cuts, he feared, will lead to further delays in programs getting the payments they rely on, not to mention the oversight that keeps kids safe.

    “I come from the private sector. I will find another job,” he said. “The issue isn’t us, it’s the children and the families. We’ve got all these people in poverty who are getting screwed over by what’s happening.” 

    A third blow came on February 25, when the House passed a budget resolution calling for $880 billion in cuts to discretionary spending programs over the next decade, with Medicaid the prime target, along with the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Head Start families overwhelmingly rely on these safety net programs. The White House’s gutting of the Department of Education also threatens many services for preschoolers, especially those in special education. (This process, which maps out the next fiscal year, is separate from the recent vote to fund the government until Sept. 30.)

    “This is going from the precipice of disaster to decimating the system,” Sklar said. “All the parts that help families, from Head Start to child care to food to health care, are all being destabilized at once.”

    Gilliam said that threats to eliminate Head Start are nothing new. After designing the program during the Johnson administration, Zigler was appointed to run it under the presidency of Richard Nixon. “Some folks told him that his job was to destroy, essentially, the program that he had created,” Gilliam said.

    Related: In 2024, Head Start programs are still funded by a formula set in the 1970s

    Head Start advocates said the program has been able to fight off political challenges in the past because it is widely distributed geographically and has bipartisan support.

    “I agree that Project 2025 is a real threat to Head Start, as well as to other programs that we all care about,” said Ryan, with the Washington State Head Start association.

    “But I will say this: We have great research. We have great data. We have a great track record. We have a lot of bipartisan support in Congress. And we have parent power.”

    By coincidence, the week the House passed its budget resolution, a group of 150 Head Start parents were on Capitol Hill lobbying as part of a group called Start Early, and they met with many Republican senators.

    Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association, struck an almost defiantly optimistic tone after the visit to lawmakers: “We still believe and have seen indicators that this administration is supportive of Head Start. And Congress as well.”

    NaMaree Cunningham and her twin sister turned two on the day of our visit. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report

    Another potential bright spot is the growth of child care support and funding on the state level. Elizabeth Groginsky is New Mexico’s first cabinet secretary for the state’s new Early Childhood Education & Care Department, and she said the pandemic woke a lot of people up to the importance of early care and education.

    “People began to understand the impact that child care has on children’s development, families’ ability to work, the overall economy,” Groginsky said.

    Since 2020, New Mexico has gone through a major expansion in home visits, child care and preschool. Vermont has made similar moves, and New York and Connecticut are heading in that direction as well. Even the deep-red state of Kentucky has expanded access.

    What all of these state-level programs have in common is that they are much more widely available to middle-class families, rather than tightly targeted to families in poverty, as Head Start still is. Historically, with programs like Medicare and Social Security, universal access has meant durable support.

    Now those states are contemplating stepping in further if the federal government drops the ball.

    “Because the state has made such an impressive commitment to child care, we’re potentially in a better spot than others,” said Janet McLaughlin, deputy commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. And Groginsky, in New Mexico, said firmly, “The governor and the legislature — I don’t think we’ll let New Mexicans go without. They’ll find a way.”

    Support for this reporting was provided by the Better Life Lab at New America.

    Contact editor Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • A look at the kind of high quality child care many cannot find

    A look at the kind of high quality child care many cannot find

    Reading my colleague Jackie Mader’s latest story about the vital importance of warm, interactive exchanges between caregivers and children brought back the terrifying feeling that comes with leaving your baby in the hands of someone you don’t really know — and the relief when you see an experienced, loving educator taking charge.

    Mader’s story details how a growing number of cities and states — red and blue — are pouring resources into training teachers and even evaluating programs on how warm and responsive teachers are. As Bridget Hamre, a research associate professor at the University of Virginia, told Mader, other elements of quality, like teacher education are “only important to the degree to which they change the way that teachers interact with kids.”

    The story, as well as a documentary that I saw last week at the SXSW EDU conference on model child care programs, left me feeling inspired about the future of child care in America for the first time in a while. The documentary, “Make a Circle,” tells the story of highly trained and qualified child care workers in the California Bay Area, and their efforts to transform the way society views their industry. It will be available on PBS in the fall, and is being shown at film festivals and other events across the U.S.

    Throughout the film, you see the intricate and important work of early educators as they play with children, teach them letters, colors and sounds, and take them for walks in the woods. That might sound basic but, like the thoughtful interactions described in Mader’s piece, can ultimately make a huge difference in the lives and well-being of children. And sadly, this kind of child care is not widely available or affordable.

    Fortunately, it was for the children of the filmmakers, husband-and-wife team Todd Boekelheide and Jen Bradwell. They actually knew some preschool owners and teachers featured in the film: Their own two children attended one of them. Bradwell calls the documentary “a love letter to early educators and a rallying cry for a child care system in crisis.”

    The system needs all of the love it can get: a point that Isabelle Hau makes in her new book, “Love to Learn,” a deep dive into the importance of building quality relationships in early childhood care. (I’ll be moderating a discussion of some of her findings at the ASU+GSV conference in San Diego next month.)

    “Close, nurturing relationships in the early years are like the foundation of a house,” Hau writes. “If the foundation is not solid, the house may shake apart later in strong winds.”

    Both Bradwell and Hau had a chance to expound on their findings at another early childhood event: a celebration of Hau’s book at the Austin, Texas, home of Libby Doggett, who over the years taught me a great deal about the importance of quality early childhood education as the former director of Pre-K Now, a 10-year campaign to advance high-quality, voluntary pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds across the U.S.

    Here was a crowd committed to improving the way we teach our littlest learners and training their teachers during this difficult time for the early childhood industry. The Hechinger Report is documenting cuts to research and other shifts in early childhood spending under the Trump administration. We keep an updated Trump tracker on our site to catalog everything we know. We also love hearing from you on these issues, so please respond to this newsletter to get in touch!

    This story about responsive teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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