Tag: shutdown

  • The Shutdown Is Over, But Thousands of Kids Are Still Locked Out of Head Start – The 74

    The Shutdown Is Over, But Thousands of Kids Are Still Locked Out of Head Start – The 74


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    Nearly 9,000 children across 16 states and Puerto Rico remained locked out of Head Start programming as of Friday evening, according to the National Head Start Association, despite the federal government’s reopening on Wednesday night.

    For some programs, the promise of incoming funding will be enough to restart operations. But many won’t be able to open their doors until they receive their federal dollars, which could take up to two weeks, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the NHSA. 

    Sheridan said the Trump administration understands the urgency and is “moving as fast as they possibly can.”

    That said, this interruption had an opportunity cost, and it’s led to instability for families and providers, he said, adding that the shutdown caused staff to focus on issues they “should not be worried about,” such as fundraising and contingency planning.

    Some providers fear greater delays since the Trump administration shuttered half of the Head Start regional offices earlier this year. 

    “They’re going to be working as hard as they can, but they’re going to be doing it with half the capacity,” said Katie Hamm, former deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development under President Joe Biden.

    And even once the funding comes through, closed centers will need to go through a series of logistical hurdles, including reaching out to families who may have found alternative child care arrangements and calling back furloughed staff, some of whom have found employment elsewhere. 

    “Head Start is not a light switch,” Hamm said. “You can’t just turn it back on.”

    This interruption has also further eroded trust between grantees and the federal government that was already shaky, she added.

    The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment on when programs can anticipate communication from the office or their funding.

    Since Nov. 1, approximately 65,000 kids and their families — close to 10% of all of those served by Head Start — have been at risk of losing their seats because their programs had not received their awarded funding during the longest government shutdown in history. The early care and education program delivers a range of resources to low-income families including medical screenings, parenting courses and connections to community resources for job, food and housing assistance. 

    At the peak of the Head Start closures, roughly 10,000 kids across 22 programs lost access to services, according to Sheridan. A number of the remaining programs were able to stay open through private donations, loans, alternative funding streams and staff’s willingness to go without pay.

    Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program with two facilities in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. Her centers have been closed since Nov. 3, impacting 177 kids and 45 staff, many of whom already live paycheck to paycheck, she said.

    Valerie Williams runs two Head Start centers in Appalachian Ohio, serving 177 kids. (Valerie Williams)

    A number of families were doubly impacted, losing access to Head Start’s resources as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, simultaneously. In the days leading up to the closure, Williams and her staff prepared families as best they could, sharing information about resources for food, assistance for utilities and heating and guidance on child care options. 

    On Thursday, Williams wrote to parents via an online portal that she hopes to restart the normal school schedule sometime next week. The post was quickly flooded with comments. 

    “This is super exciting!!” wrote one parent. “Best news in a long time. Carter has been asking every day. Hope to see u guys very soon.”

    “Yayyy,” wrote another. “The kids miss you guys so much!”

    Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. (Valerie Williams)

    Still, Williams knows reopening won’t be seamless. Along with program leaders across the country, she’ll need to call back furloughed staff, place food orders and handle a number of other operational challenges.

    And despite the excitement, the transition back may also prove tricky for some kids.

    “I do think that it will feel like starting school again for a lot of our classrooms,” Williams said. “They’ve been out for two weeks … You’re going to work on separation anxiety issues, you’re going to have to get into that routine again and the structure of a classroom environment. So I think that will be a big issue for a lot of our teachers.” 

    As of Friday afternoon, Williams was still awaiting communication from the federal Office of Head Start with information about the anticipated timeline for next steps. 

    “As soon as we get that notice of award, [I want to] start our staff and kids back immediately,” she said. “The very next day.”

    Now that the shutdown has ended, what’s next for Head Start?

    Funding for Head Start is complex. Some 80% comes from federal grants that are released to local providers on a staggered schedule throughout the year. This year, grant recipients with funding deadlines on the first of October and November were left scrambling, as the federal shutdown dragged on.

    The government began to resume operations late Wednesday night after President Donald Trump signed a bill, funding most federal agencies through Jan. 30 and allowing programs that didn’t receive their funding on time, including Head Start, to use forthcoming dollars to backpay expenses incurred over the past month and a half.

    Here’s what Hamm predicts will happen next: The Office of Head Start will recall all staff to resume, including those who were furloughed during the shutdown. The employees will review grant applications, a process which now requires them to flag any language that might be reflective of diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Next, money will be sent along to the remaining regional offices, and eventually dispersed to individual grantees. The NHSA is hopeful that this process will be completed by Thanksgiving for all grantees.

    There are two things the federal government can do to help centers open faster, according to Hamm. First, they could waive a typical protocol that leads to a period of seven days between when a member of Congress is notified that their state will be receiving funding and when the funding actually goes out, Hamm explained. 

    Officials could also notify grantees, in writing, about how much money they’ll get and when it’s expected to come through, so they can begin planning. 

    Unlike SNAP, which received guaranteed funding through the budget year, money for Head Start remains uncertain beyond Jan. 30. While the fear of another shutdown has caused “quite a bit of worry” among the Head Start community, Sheridan said it would likely lead to fewer program disruptions, since it wouldn’t fall at the start of the fiscal year.

    Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. (Tommy Sheridan)

    To prevent similar chaos moving forward, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin introduced a bill in the final days of the shutdown that would guarantee uninterrupted service for fiscal year 2026. 

    “The 750,000 children and their families who use Head Start shouldn’t pay the price for Washington dysfunction,” Baldwin, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, wrote in a statement to The 74.

    Multiple funding threats and deep staffing cuts by the Trump administration over the past year have plunged programs across the country into uncertainty. In the wake of that recent upheaval, a leadership change is also underway. The acting director of the Office of Head Start, Tala Hooban, accepted a new role within the Office of Administration for Children and Families and will be replaced by political appointee Laurie Todd-Smith, according to an email statement from ACF. Todd-Smith currently leads the Office of Early Childhood Development, which oversees the Office of Head Start. 

    Sheridan described this move as anticipated and not particularly concerning, though others were less sure. Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, noted that Hooban was a longtime civil servant and strong supporter of the Head Start program. Without her, he fears “there’s nobody internally with any kind of power that will push back,” on future threats to the program.

    Another worry plaguing providers: current funding for Head Start has remained stagnant since the end of 2024, meaning that through at least Jan. 30, programs will be operating under the same budget amid rising costs across the board.

    In previous years, the program’s grant recipients typically got a cost-of-living adjustment, such as the 2.35% bump ($275 million) for fiscal year 2024. In May, a group of almost 200 members of Congress signed a letter to a House Appropriations subcommittee, requesting an adjustment of 3.2% for 2026. A recent statement from NHSA suggested that instead, the proposed Senate bill for next year includes a jump of just 0.6%, or $77 million.

    “If we don’t see a funding increase in line with inflation, that means that Head Start will be facing a cut of that degree,” said Sheridan. “It’s just kind of a quiet cut, or a silent cut.”

    “I think what will end up happening,” said Ryan, “is you’ll end up seeing a massive reduction in the number of kids being served.”


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  • Education Department resumes operations after prolonged shutdown

    Education Department resumes operations after prolonged shutdown

    Federal education staff are returning to work after a weeks-long federal government shutdown that halted many U.S. Department of Education activities ended Wednesday. However, the agreed-upon plan to open the government is only temporary.

    The continuing resolution signed into law Wednesday funds federal education programs at fiscal year 2025 levels. This temporary spending plan expires Jan. 30, unless Congress agrees to a more permanent budget before that deadline.

    The deal nullifies the reduction-in-force notices sent to 465 agency employees on Oct. 10. The Education Department is also prohibited from issuing additional RIFs through the end of January and must provide back pay to all employees who did not receive compensation during the shutdown. 

    In a statement to K-12 Dive on Thursday, the Education Department said that it “brought back staff that were impacted by the Schumer Shutdown,” in a reference to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

    In Senate floor remarks Nov. 10, Schumer said, “The last 41 days have exposed the depths of Donald Trump’s cruelty. He shut the government down longer than any president in American history and took innocent kids, veterans, and federal workers as political hostages, all because he refuses to do anything — anything — to fix the healthcare crisis and instead keeps pushing policies that will cut people’s coverage even more.”

    The statement from the Education Department added that the “Department will follow all applicable laws” and that all employees coming off furlough are back to active duty.

    However, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents more than 2,700 U.S. Department of Education employees, said the return to work for agency staffers has been “rocky.”

    Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE 252, said in a statement Thursday afternoon that employees have not received official notices from the Education Department’s human resources office to return to work. Rather, they are relying on text messages from supervisors or colleagues. Gittleman added that many employees named in the October firings are locked out of their computers and do not have access to agency email. 

    “This disorganization and chaos only further demoralizes the hardworking public servants at the Education Department that have faced threats, harassment, illegal firings — and 44 days without paychecks,” Gittleman said.

    Shutdown impacts

    The shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — began Oct. 1 after Congress reached an impasse on spending for FY 2026. While day-to-day K-12 and higher education operations stayed mostly unaffected, the federal shutdown put a pause on Office for Civil Rights investigations, new grant-making activities and technical assistance support.

    Still, some disruptions trickled down to early childhood programs and K-12 school systems.

    The National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, in a Nov. 7 statement, warned that delays in Impact Aid payments, which help school systems that are located in areas with non-taxable federal property, were “destabilizing school districts across the country.”

    NAFIS Executive Director Cherise Imai said that funding delays were not only inconvenient, they were “dismantling student support systems and threatening the stability of entire communities.”

    The association said a survey of 90 federally impacted school districts found that more than one-third were feeling budget pressures, with many cutting programs, freezing hiring and drawing on reserves to stay open. 

    Early in the shutdown, it was expected that athletics and extracurricular activities at Department of Defense Education Activity schools would be paused, but those events were later deemed excepted activities during the lapse in appropriations. 

    Although the federal government has reopened, uncertainty remains. According to a Nov. 10 posting by Tara Thomas, senior government affairs manager at AASA, The School Superintendents Association, “the agreement does not provide superintendents with any additional certainty regarding education funding for the 26-27 school year.” 

    Staffing levels at the Education Department remain quite lean as well due to layoffs, buyouts and attrition that occurred prior to the shutdown. According to a court filing from Nov. 12, the total number of Education Department employees is 2,536, down from 4,133 when Trump was inaugurated Jan. 20. 

    In early childhood education, the shutdown caused nearly 10,000 children to temporarily lose access to federally supported Head Start centers after funding lapsed, according to the National Head Start Association. 

    Head Start provides early childhood education services for children from low-income families. NHSA said the shutdown caused thousands of parents to lose child care services and cut access to healthy meals at the same time federal benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program expired Nov. 1.



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  • Where the Ed Dept. Stands After Longest Government Shutdown

    Where the Ed Dept. Stands After Longest Government Shutdown

    The House of Representatives passed a legislative package late Wednesday evening in a 222-209 vote, putting Congress one step closer to ending the federal government’s longest shutdown in history.

    Now, the legislation, which first passed the Senate late Sunday night, heads to the White House. There, President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law.

    One policy expert told Inside Higher Ed that he expects to see little operational change for institutions as the government reopens. But he and others will be paying close attention to whether the Trump administration follows through on one of the bill’s key compromises: reversing the most recent round of federal layoffs.

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    Part of the package would fund the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction, the Department of Agriculture, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Congress through the end of the fiscal year. But it only appropriates funding for the Department of Education and most other agencies until Jan. 30, using what is known as a continuing resolution. For the most part, the CR gives agencies access to the same levels of federal funding as the last fiscal year.

    Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, said because some of the Education Department’s staff continued working throughout October and into November, not much will change for colleges and universities.

    “Financial aid was being disbursed, student loans were being serviced, all those things. So there probably won’t be an immediate significant shift,” he said. “It will, of course, be important for [grant] programs who have not been able to contact program officers with concerns or questions to have staff now available to them again. But that’s probably the biggest thing.”

    Fansmith also noted that some education benefits for military service members, which in many cases have been disrupted and backlogged due to staffing shortages, will take some time to get back up to speed.

    The 4 Parts of the Stopgap Bill

    “There are veterans who have housing benefits and education benefits and all sorts of assistance that they’re using to fund their educations that have just not been coming through over the last six weeks,” he said. “And even when they turn the government back on … that backlog has only grown in the interim. So it’s not going to be an immediate resolution.”

    Senate Democrats also negotiated with Republicans to reverse Trump’s latest round of layoffs in the stopgap bill. Theoretically, the legislation should reinstate more than 460 Department of Education employees within five days of it being enacted.

    It mandates that any employee who was subject to a reduction in force during the shutdown “shall have that notice rescinded and be returned to employment status.” (The majority of those employees were tasked with overseeing federal grant programs for both K–12 and higher education.)

    But Rachel Gittleman, president of the Education Department’s union, argues the language in the bill doesn’t do enough to protect public servants. She worries that saying staffers must be “returned to employment status” could allow Education Secretary Linda McMahon to place union members on administrative leave and not actually put them back to work.

    “The Trump administration has shown us repeatedly that they want to illegally dismantle our congressionally created federal agency,” she said. As such, “We have no confidence that the U.S. Education Department will follow the terms of the continuing resolution or allow the employees named in October firings to return—or even keep their jobs past January.”

    Fansmith is also skeptical department employees will return to their jobs.

    “[The administration hasn’t] shown much willingness to follow what the law requires. So I would absolutely assume we should expect to see efforts to further reduce staffing,” he said. “They’re not hiding the fact they’re trying to do it, and they don’t have a lot of compunction about the methods they use to do so.”

    A department spokesperson, however, told Inside Higher Ed that all employees—both those who were furloughed and those laid off during the shutdown—will return to work, as they remain employees of the department.

    The department also pointed to a ruling from the federal district court in Northern California that blocked the reduction in force in late October, saying that under that order, all employees who received a RIF notice during the shutdown remain employees of the federal government.

    Inside Higher Ed reached out to multiple Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate to ask about the concerns Gittleman and Fansmith raised. None responded prior to publication.

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  • Higher Ed Feels “Cumulative Exhaustion” of Longest Shutdown

    Higher Ed Feels “Cumulative Exhaustion” of Longest Shutdown

    As the current government shutdown claims the mantle of longest in American history, uncertainty is ratcheting up for faculty, students and their institutions trying to budget for the weeks, months and years ahead.

    Five weeks in, the federal government’s closure has disrupted nearly all aspects of campus life, including research, basic needs support and military-affiliated students’ access to tuition assistance.

    On Monday, North Carolina State University joined a growing list of institutions that have limited spending and faced research disruptions as a result of the government’s inaction. The university said the ongoing shutdown has delayed payment for federally funded research activities worth more than $25 million per month, according to an internal memo reviewed by Inside Higher Ed.

    “To ensure the long-term continuity of our research, we must take steps to preserve the university’s available resources that support our vital research projects,” administrators wrote in the memo to deans, directors and department heads. “Effective immediately, we are directing all colleges and units to limit all non-payroll expenses on federal contract, grant or other award mechanisms.”

    While federal payments remain suspended, federally funded researchers at NC State won’t be able to spend money on new hires, nonessential travel, consulting services, and supplies and materials among other things.

    Meanwhile, it’s still not clear when the government might reopen.

    Health Care in Question

    On Tuesday, Senate Republicans and Democrats failed for the 14th time in 36 days to negotiate an end to the shutdown. Those negotiations have centered on Democrats’ demands—and Republicans’ refusal—to extend enhanced tax credits for health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

    Without those subsidies, the cost of health insurance is expected to increase for millions of Americans, including thousands of adjunct professors who don’t qualify for health insurance through their institutions and have only a small margin of discretionary income.

    “In this stalemate, there are no options I have to meaningfully plan for what the next month-and-a-half looks like going into the new year. There’s just no way to get ahead,” said Thomas Moomjy, a lecturer in American Studies at Rutgers University at New Brunswick who buys health insurance through New Jersey’s health care exchange. “I also have to account for the fact that the cost of everything else—electricity, car insurance—is going up, too.”

    But the results of Tuesday’s elections, which saw wins for Democrats in numerous state and local races, may further complicate the path toward reopening the government.

    President Donald Trump blamed Republican losses on the shutdown, emboldening Democrats to double down on their fight to extend the health insurance subsidies. “Donald Trump clearly is feeling pressure to bring this shutdown to an end,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Well, I have good news for the president: Meet with Democrats, reopen the government.” So far, Trump has refused such a meeting, insisting that the government reopen prior to any negotiations.

    None of this week’s developments offer hope to college students, or some faculty and staff, who aren’t sure if they’ll be able to afford basic necessities as the shutdown continues.

    “At this point, I just want the government to reopen,” Moomjy said. “I’m not sure that will fix the ACA stuff, but we’re reaching a point of cumulative exhaustion. If this pushes on much further without [Congress] offering something to the American people to say, ‘We at least hear you and can help to lower it in some way,’ then it feels like they’re fighting each other with slogans. The people that are getting hurt are us down on the ground.”

    Basic Needs Insecurity

    Vulnerable Americans also include more than 1 million college students who rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy food, and who didn’t receive those subsidies as planned on the first of the month.

    On Monday, in response to court orders, Trump agreed to fund half of the program during the shutdown. After Tuesday’s election, he increased it to 65 percent of full funding, though experts say most SNAP recipients will get far less than that once they receive their already-late benefits. Despite those partial concessions, many colleges—which are already grappling with tight budgets as a result of Trump’s ongoing assault on higher education this year—are still scrambling to help their students cope with the partial loss to benefits this month.

    On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP.

    Concerns about paying for food, health care and housing during the shutdown are top of mind for students and families, according to an informal survey conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE). And those worries extend beyond students and parents who work in the public sector or receive government assistance directly; 30 percent said their private sector jobs are suffering because of the shutdown.

    “One [parent of a college student] said they work for a private contractor whose budgets partially depend on federal funding. The shutdown has reduced and delayed funding which affects their ability to provide services, earn their regular income and meet their basic needs,” Emmanual A. Guillory, senior director of government relations for ACE, told Inside Higher Ed. “Other [students and parents] said their inability to pay bills is causing strain on their mental health.”

    Disruptions for Military Students

    The shutdown is also directly threatening some students’ ability to stay enrolled at all.

    While civilian students can at least access federal financial aid to cover their tuition during the shutdown, student-veterans and their dependents who rely on military benefits—including Military Tuition Assistance (TA) and the My Career Advancement Account (MyCAA) tuition assistance program for military spouses—to pay for their education are dealing with disruptions and delays to those payments.

    Some institutions, including Austin Peay State University in Tennessee and the online learning behemoth Southern New Hampshire University, are helping military-affiliated students stay on track during the shutdown by allowing them to register without payments or tuition assistance in place.

    According to an SNHU spokesperson, 2,840 undergraduates who receive military tuition assistance were impacted by the shutdown when they started a new term last week. If the government is still closed by the time the next graduate term starts next week, an additional 440 military-affiliated students who have already registered for classes will need waivers from SNHU.

    Disruptions to GI Bill payments—caused by a system failure at the Department of Veterans Affairs and compounded by the shutdown—may also put up to 75,000 survivors and dependents of deceased military veterans at “serious” risk of losing access to post-secondary education subsidies, according to the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

    Meanwhile, Senate Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse on resuming government operations.

    Guillory of ACE, who was at the Capitol this week for discussions about implementing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, said that from what he’s observed “it’s highly unlikely” that a deal to reopen the government will be reached by Friday.

    But whenever it does finally happen, higher education institutions and their students and faculty who have been affected by the shutdown won’t just be able to pick up where they left off.

    “There’s going to be a backlog of things that needs to get done,” Guillory said. “This is pushing everything back and leaving institutions in a place of uncertainty.”

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  • Want to Protect American Children? End the Shutdown – The 74

    Want to Protect American Children? End the Shutdown – The 74


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    Politicians love to say, “We must protect our children. They are our future.” But looking at what’s happening in Congress right now, children are not being protected. Families are not being prioritized. Instead, lawmakers are locked in a standoff, waiting to see who blinks first as they fight over who gets the last word and how big of a tax break they can give the wealthiest Americans.

    Meanwhile, families — especially families of color and low-income families — are left to hold their breath and wonder what this shutdown means for them. As members of Congress keep making their rounds on television, babies still need formula, toddlers still need health screenings, children still need breakfast and lunch at school and in their child care programs, and parents still need child care so they can work. Amid extreme stress, families are left, wondering how they will be able to take care of their children.

    The demands of children and their families do not stop just because Congress is at a standstill. 

    According to Kids’ Share 2024, an annual report published by the Urban Institute about federal expenditures, children received only about 9% of all federal spending in 2023, while about 43% of federal spending went toward health and retirement benefits for adults 18 years and older. That’s a very small percentage for a nation in which politicians on both sides of the aisle have expressed interest in increased government investment in children. These numbers contradict the narrative that claims children matter because they are our future.

    That 9% starts to feel even smaller during a government shutdown. Some programs, like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, are mandatory, meaning they don’t require annual congressional approval. But others, including a number of crucial children’s programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), are funded through the annual appropriations process, which Congress must approve. This means when lawmakers can’t agree on a budget, these critical programs are left in limbo.

    The fallout on the horizon from this needless dysfunction is becoming clearer.

    In September, the National WIC Association reminded the public that WIC only had enough funds to temporarily remain open during a government shutdown. Now, according to Reuters, at least two dozen state websites warn there could be an unprecedented benefit gap for more than 41 million people in America who get aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the nearly 7 million people who rely on WIC. 

    Georgia Machell, president and chief executive officer of the National WIC Association, delivered this sobering news last week.

    “Without additional support, State WIC Agencies face another looming crisis,” she said. “Several are set to run out of funds to pay for WIC benefits on November 1 and may need to start making contingency plans.”

    Many families in historically marginalized communities, who already face greater barriers to health care, housing and early education, will feel this impact even more sharply. For example, we know that tens of thousands of young children and families rely on vital support received through Head Start, a service that promotes early learning and development, health and well-being. The shutdown is already in its fourth week, and, according to a statement issued on Oct. 16 from the National Head Start Association, if the government shutdown doesn’t end by Nov. 1, more than 65,000 children and families will be at risk of losing critical services. 

    A missed doctor’s appointment, a delay in SNAP benefits or a gap in child care isn’t just inconvenient. It can destabilize a family and hinder a child’s development, especially in the classroom.

    A research brief published by The Food Research & Action Center highlighted the links between hunger and learning, stating that “behavioral, emotional, mental health, and academic problems are more prevalent among children and adolescents struggling with hunger” and that young people experiencing hunger have lower math scores and poorer grades. The shutdown will have real and lasting consequences on the learning, development and well-being of America’s children because these programs are being impacted.

    It’s frustrating to watch lawmakers stand at podiums and declare how much they care about children while their actions — or inaction — puts children at risk. 

    Words don’t put food on the table. Words don’t pay rent. But actions do. 

    And right now, the actions coming out of Congress are sending an unfortunate message to families: protecting children is not the priority.

    If children truly are our future, then they cannot be treated as bargaining chips. Children deserve more than 9% of America’s federal spending budget. We need federal budgets that reflect children’s needs and protection for essential services. Critical programs that protect child health and well-being should never be disrupted by a government shutdown.

    Finally, Americans deserve government accountability. Policymakers should be held responsible for their words and actions, especially when they fail to deliver on the promises they make about protecting children.

    Children cannot wait. They are growing, learning and developing right now. The choices we make as a country today will shape their tomorrow.


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  • Higher Education Inquirer : The US Government Shutdown: “Let Them Eat Cheese”

    Higher Education Inquirer : The US Government Shutdown: “Let Them Eat Cheese”

    The stock market is up. Politicians beam on cable news about “economic resilience.” But on the ground, the picture looks very different. Jobs are scarce or unstable, rents keep rising, and food insecurity is back to 1980s levels. The government shutdown has hit federal workers, SNAP recipients, and service programs for the poor and disabled. And what does Washington offer the hungry? Cheese—literally and metaphorically.

    Government cheese once symbolized a broken welfare system—a processed product handed out to the desperate while politicians preached self-reliance. Today’s version is digital and disembodied: food banks filled with castoffs, online portals for benefits that don’t come, “relief” programs that require a master’s degree to navigate. People are told to be grateful while they wait in line for what little is left.

    Meanwhile, the headlines celebrate record-breaking stock prices and defense contracts. Billions flow abroad to Argentina, Ukraine, and Israel—especially Israel, where U.S. aid underwrites weapons used in what many describe as genocide in Palestine. Corporate media downplay it, politicians justify it, and dissenters are told they’re unpatriotic.

    In the U.S., the old cry of “personal responsibility” masks the reality of neoliberal economics—a system that privatizes profit and socializes pain. When the government shuts down, it’s the poor who feel it first. The “educated underclass”—graduates burdened by debt, adjuncts working without benefits, laid-off professionals—are just a few missed paychecks away from standing in the same line for government cheese.

    Yet many Americans don’t see who the real enemy is. They turn on one another—Democrats versus Republicans, urban versus rural, native-born versus immigrant—while the architects of austerity watch from gated communities. The spectacle distracts from the structural theft: trillions transferred upward, democracy traded for debt, justice sold to the highest bidder.

    “Let them eat cheese” is no longer a historical joke. It’s the bipartisan message of a political class that rewards Wall Street while abandoning Main Street. And as long as the public stays divided, hungry, and distracted, the pantry of power remains locked.

    Sources

    • U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Household Food Insecurity in the United States in 2024.”

    • Gary Roth. The Educated Underclass. 

    • Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “Economic Effects of a Government Shutdown.”

    • Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Wealth Inequality and Stock Market Concentration.”

    • The Intercept. “How U.S. Weapons and Aid Fuel the Assault on Gaza.”

    • Associated Press. “Food Banks Report Record Demand Amid Inflation.”

    • Jacobin Magazine. “Neoliberalism and the Return of American Austerity.”

    • Reuters. “U.S. Sends Billions in Loans and Aid to Argentina.”

    • Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “Wage Stagnation and the Cost of Living Crisis.”

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  • ‘The clock is ticking’: Shutdown imperils food, child care for many

    ‘The clock is ticking’: Shutdown imperils food, child care for many

    For families in more than a hundred Head Start programs across the country, November could mark the beginning of some hard decisions.

    On Saturday, 134 Head Start centers serving 58,400 children would normally receive their annual federal funding, but the ongoing government shutdown has put that money in jeopardy. The federally funded Head Start provides free preschool and child care for low-income families, and is particularly important to rural communities with few other child care options. 

    At the same time, the federal government has said that because of the shutdown, it cannot distribute Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that families also expect on the first of the month. Plus, a program that provides extra money for families to buy milk, baby formula, and fruit and vegetables is also running out of $300 million in emergency funding provided to it earlier this month.

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

    All this means low-income families are facing upheaval on multiple fronts, said Christy Gleason, the vice president of policy, advocacy and campaigns for the nonprofit group Save the Children. Families in Head Start often receive other federal benefits, so they could simultaneously be facing a disruption in child care — and the meals provided there — and public food assistance.

    “You’re going to end up with parents and caregivers who are skipping meals themselves, because that’s the way they put food on the table for their kids,” Gleason said. Save the Children manages Head Start programs in rural Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, but its programs are not among those affected by the Nov. 1 annual funding deadline. Head Start has 1,600 programs that receive their yearly funding throughout the calendar year.

    There are still a few days left to avert the crisis, Gleason said. More than two dozen states are suing the government to force it to use a pot of money that had been set aside for paying SNAP benefits in an emergency. President Donald Trump also said this week that the food aid situation would be fixed, but didn’t offer details. Federal lawmakers have also introduced different proposals to keep food assistance money flowing. A handful of states said they will continue to pay for the supplemental milk and formula program, known as WIC. Head Start programs may be able to tap local money, but that isn’t expected to last long. 

    “The clock is ticking,” Gleason said. “Every hour that goes by is an hour where the stress for these families grows, but it’s not too late for government action to change course and make sure children are not the ones to suffer the consequences of political decisions.”

    New data quantifies child care gaps

    Nearly 15 million ages 5 and under in the United States have “all available parents” — both adults in a two-parent household, or one if the child has one adult caregiver — in the workforce. The country has about 11 million licensed or registered child care slots.

    That leaves about 4 million children whose families may need child care — a hard-to-grasp number that obscures the fact that some parts of the country may have greater needs than other regions because child care providers are concentrated in some areas and sparse in others.

    The Buffett Early Childhood Institute, based at the University of Nebraska, is trying to address that problem. It has created a map that it says will give a more accurate view of where child care is needed the most, down to the congressional district. 

    The map captures the number of children with working parents and the number of available spots in licensed child care. What it cannot capture is demand — not every family needs child care, even families with parents in the workforce — but the map does allow policymakers a starting place for a more nuanced evaluation of their community’s needs.

    “We know the limitations of the data, but we also know in order to address the gap, this needs to be broken down into bite-sized pieces,” said Linda Smith, director of policy at the Buffett Institute.

    This story about the government shutdown 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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  • 4 Weeks Into Shutdown, Colleges, Students Running Out of Options

    4 Weeks Into Shutdown, Colleges, Students Running Out of Options

    The government has been shut down for a month and Congress remains locked in a stalemate. Students are going hungry, veterans have been deserted and vital research has been left in the lurch. The longer the shutdown drags on, the more harm it will do to higher education.

    Most urgently, the USDA will not use emergency funds to help cover the costs of the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program. More than a million college students who rely on SNAP for their basic needs won’t have that support starting Saturday. Mark Huelsman, the director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, said the situation will force students and colleges into “an impossible situation” and could lead to many students dropping out.

    The crisis extends beyond food insecurity into student support programs, with the shutdown throwing veterans’ education into limbo. Nobody is answering the GI Bill hotline that thousands of veterans use each month to get information on tuition, eligibility and housing allowances. Staff at Veterans Affairs regional offices are furloughed, putting an end to career counseling and delaying GI Bill claims.

    As direct services to students falter, colleges are moving into mitigation mode. Gap funds, meant to serve institutions in these circumstances, are dwindling. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that institutions are limiting travel, research and job offers in order to preserve cash while hundreds of millions in research funds are on pause. A training program funded by a grant from the Labor Department is on hold because a federal program officer isn’t at work to approve the next tranche of cash.

    Ironically, part of Democrats’ resistance to reopening the government is serving to protect higher ed funding. Democrats are trying to prevent Republicans from clawing back approved funding through the rescissions process, like they did this summer with grants to public broadcasting and USAID. The risk to education funds that don’t align with the White House’s priorities is real. In a potentially illegal move of impoundment, the Department of Education has canceled or rejected funding for at least 100 TRIO programs affecting more than 43,000 disadvantaged students. Last month it reallocated $132 million in funds away from minority-serving institutions to historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges.

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration—never one to let a good crisis go to waste—is using the shutdown to further gut the Education Department. Most of the department has been furloughed, and 10 days into the shutdown the administration fired nearly 500 more Education Department staff. A federal judge indefinitely blocked the layoffs this week, but the administration will likely challenge the ruling. If the cuts happen, the department will have fewer than half the employees it started with in January. The offices that handle civil rights complaints, TRIO funding and special education will be decimated.

    The staff cuts set the stage for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reiterate her plans to shutter the department. In a post on X two weeks into the shutdown, she said the fact that millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid and schools are operating as normal during the shutdown “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”

    “The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” she added.

    Policy experts predict the shutdown will end around mid-November, when enough people feel the pain of not getting a paycheck and start to complain to their senators and representatives. But colleges won’t pick up where they left off. A significant pause in funding derails education journeys for disadvantaged students and throttles valuable scientific research. Subject matter expertise and human resources will be lost through Education Department staffing cuts. Already on the defense after nearly a year of attacks on DEI, academic freedom and research funding by the administration, higher ed will struggle to recover from yet another blow.

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  • What to Know about NYC School Bus Companies’ Shutdown Threats – The 74

    What to Know about NYC School Bus Companies’ Shutdown Threats – The 74


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    New York City’s troubled yellow school bus system is in the spotlight once again, with threats of a service disruption and looming mass layoffs due to a contract dispute with the city.

    The city’s largest school bus companies notified the state Department of Labor that they are preparing to shut down operations and lay off employees on Nov. 1 if they don’t receive a contract extension, the New York Post first reported Monday.

    Lawmakers, advocates, and city officials immediately condemned the bus companies’ threat, with schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos calling the move “deeply upsetting and an act of bad faith.”

    The timing of the bus company’s push, just before November’s mayoral election, for a five-year extension that would outlast the incoming mayor’s first term, “effectively bypassed the oversight of voters and elected officials who manage these vital services,” Aviles-Ramos said.

    Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani agreed, telling reporters at an unrelated Tuesday press conference that the oversight panel in charge of approving the contract “is right to not give in to the threats.”

    The bus companies argue they have no choice because their temporary contract is expiring and they can no longer operate without a longer-term agreement.

    The episode is the latest in a long history of conflicts over how to manage the sprawling yellow bus system, which relies on a patchwork of largely for-profit companies to ferry some 150,000 students across nearly 19,000 routes each day. All told, the city spent nearly $2 billion on school busing last year.

    Parents and advocates hope this clash can draw renewed attention to problems in a system notorious for delayed and no-show buses, long rides without sufficient AC, and a lack of transparency.

    “There’s this tug of war over the money,” said Sara Catalinotto, the executive director of the advocacy group Parents for Improving School Transportation. “But this is a service, and without it these kids are discriminated against.”

    What’s the history behind these bus contracts?

    The current dispute springs from a disagreement over how to handle the city’s “legacy” school bus contracts, which date back to the 1970s and are typically renewed every five years. They most recently expired in June.

    In the months before the contracts expired, city Education Department officials signaled they were interested in rebidding the contracts, or soliciting offers from a new set of companies to more efficiently modernize buses, increase service, and strengthen sanctions for contract violations.

    Simply renewing the existing contracts gives the city “far less negotiating ability … because we have to continue with this same set of vendors,” Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s former deputy chancellor, told the City Council in May.

    But city officials say they can’t move forward with rebidding without the option to offer something called the “Employee Protection Provision,” or EPP.

    That protection — built into the legacy contracts for decades — ensures unionized bus workers laid off by one company are prioritized for hiring by other companies, at their existing wages. Drivers and union officials consider the provision a dealbreaker — and would almost certainly strike without it.

    But city officials say a 2011 state court decision prohibits them from inserting EPP into new contracts if they rebid — and only allows them to keep EPP if they extend existing contracts. The only fix, city officials say, is changing state law — an effort that has so far stalled in Albany.

    Without that state legislation, city officials faced a choice: inking another five-year extension or pushing for a shorter-term contract in the hopes state lawmakers quickly clear the way for a rebid.

    Who is opposed to a five-year contract renewal?

    While the city moved ahead with negotiations for a five-year extension, a growing number of advocates, parents, and lawmakers flooded meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP — the body that approves Education Department contracts — to push for a shorter-term contract.

    “Do not vote yes to extend for some long period of time,” said Christi Angel, a parent leader in District 75, which serves students with significant disabilities who disproportionately rely on busing, at the September PEP meeting. Roughly 43% of students who ride school buses have disabilities. “Don’t reward bad behavior,” Angel said. “This is a broken system.”

    Their arguments quickly gained traction in the PEP, where multiple members expressed their opposition to a five-year extension at September’s meeting.

    The panel is expected to vote on the five-year extension next month, after the mayoral election, said PEP Chair Greg Faulkner, though he would prefer to wait until the new mayor takes office in January.

    “Shouldn’t the mayor-elect have some say in a billion dollar contract?” said Faulkner. “I just think that’s sound governance.”

    Why are the city and bus companies at odds right now?

    Over the summer, the city and bus companies agreed to two emergency extensions to keep service running, the second of which expires on Oct. 31.

    Without a guarantee of an active contract after that date — since the PEP is not voting this month — the bus companies claim they have no choice but to consider layoffs.

    The city, however, had “long planned” to offer an emergency extension for November and December, and officials delivered the agreement to the bus companies on Monday, Aviles-Ramos said.

    The PEP only votes on those extensions after they’ve already taken effect, Faulkner noted.

    The bus companies, he said, are attempting to “create confusion in order to hold us hostage for a longer term agreement.”

    The bus companies reject that assertion and say they simply cannot survive any longer on emergency extensions, which don’t allow them the kind of long-term certainty they need to operate their businesses.

    “Banks will not finance 30-day extensions, buses can’t be bought, payroll cannot be paid,” said Sean Crowley, a lawyer representing several companies. “Enough is enough!”

    The companies claim that they have already worked out the contours of a new five-year contract extension with the city and are just awaiting the PEP’s approval, though Faulkner said the Education Department hasn’t yet presented the PEP with the contract.

    What happens from here?

    A spokesperson confirmed that several bus companies had received the city’s offer for another emergency contract extension and were reviewing the documents.

    Aviles-Ramos said the city is working to get “alternative transportation services” in place if that falls through.

    But even if the bus companies and city do manage to avoid a service shutdown Nov. 1, the episode raises larger questions about how to make lasting improvements in the troubled system. Ongoing driver shortages make that task even harder.

    The bus companies argue that the five-year contract agreement they sketched out with the city would achieve many of those goals, including stricter accountability to ensure drivers use GPS tracking, more staffing to field parent complaints, and monetary penalties for companies that underperform, according to testimony submitted to the PEP in September.

    But critics continue to push for a shorter-term extension to give the state legislature time to pass EPP legislation, and clear the way for a rebid.

    Mamdani has not offered specifics about how he would manage the school bus system, but said Tuesday that given the many concerns about yellow bus service, any contract extension deserves a “hard look.”

    Some reformers point to changes already underway. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city bought out the largest bus company and turned it over to a nonprofit overseen by the city.

    Matt Berlin, the CEO of that nonprofit, called NYCSBUS, and former director of the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation, believes the nonprofit model has “a lot to offer the city” and could expand.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • Parents, advocates alarmed as Trump leverages shutdown to gut special education department

    Parents, advocates alarmed as Trump leverages shutdown to gut special education department

    Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders. 

    Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services?

    Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities. Eliminating the Education Department entirely is a primary objective of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided much of the administration’s education policy. After the department is gone, Project 2025 said oversight of special education should move to HHS, which manages some programs that help adults with disabilities. 

    But the sprawling department that oversees public health has no expertise in the complex education law, Rodriguez told McMahon.

    “Someone might be able to push the button to disseminate funding, but they wouldn’t be able to answer a question from a parent or a school district,” she said in an interview later. 

    For her part, McMahon had wavered during her confirmation hearing on the subject. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know,” she told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who shared concerns from parents worried about who would enforce the law’s provisions.

    But nine days into a government shutdown that has furloughed most federal government workers, the Trump administration announced that it was planning a drastic “reduction in force” that would lay off more than 450 people, including almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs. Rodriguez believes the layoffs are a way that the administration plans to force the special education law to be managed by some other federal office.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    The Education Department press office did not respond to a question about the administration’s plans for special education oversight. Instead, the press office pointed to a social media post from McMahon on Oct. 15. The fact that schools are “operating as normal” during the government shutdown, McMahon wrote on X, “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary.”’

    Yet in that May meeting, Rodriguez said she was told that HHS might not be the right place for IDEA, she recalled. While the new department leadership made no promises, they assured her that any move of the law’s oversight would have to be done with congressional approval, Rodriguez said she was told. 

    The move to gut the office overseeing special education law was shocking to families and those who work with students with disabilities. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under IDEA, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March, bringing the agency’s total workforce to around 2,200 people. 

    For Rodriguez, whose organization supports students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, McMahon’s private assurances was the administration “just outright lying to the public about their intentions.”

    “The audacity of this administration to communicate in her confirmation, in her recent testimony to Congress and to a disability rights leader to her face, ‘Don’t worry, we will support kids with disabilities,’” Rodriguez said. “And then to not just turn a 180-degree on that, but to decimate the ability to enforce the law that supports our kids.”

    She added: “It could not just be contradictory. It feels like a bait and switch.”

    Five days after the firings were announced, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, setting up a legal showdown that is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. The high court has sided with the president on most of his efforts to drastically reshape the federal workforce. And President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday press briefing that more cuts to “Democrat programs” are coming.

    “They’re never going to come back in many cases,” he added.

    Related: Hundreds of thousands of students are entitled to training and help finding jobs. They don’t get it

    In her post on X, McMahon also said that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” referring to the layoffs. 

    But special education is more than just money, said Danielle Kovach, a special education teacher in Hopatcong, N.J. Kovach is also a former president of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization for special educators.

    “I equate it to, what would happen if we dismantled a control tower at a busy airport?” Kovach said. “It doesn’t fly the plane. It doesn’t tell people where to go. But it ensures that everyone flies smoothly.”

    Katy Neas, a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that most people involved in the education system want to do right by children.

    “You can’t do right if you don’t know what the answer is,” said Neas, who is now the chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “You can’t get there if you don’t know how to get your questions answered.”

    Families also rely on IDEA’s mandate that each child with a disability receives a free, appropriate public education — and the protections that they can receive if a school or district does not live up to that requirement.

    Maribel Gardea, a parent in San Antonio, said she fought with her son’s school district for years over accommodations for his disability. Her son Voozeki, 14, has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He uses an eye-gaze device that allows him to communicate when he looks at different symbols on a portable screen. The district resisted getting the device for him to use at school until, Gardea said, she reminded them of IDEA’s requirements.

    “That really stood them up,” she said.

    Related: Trump wants to shake up education. What that could mean for a charter school started by a GOP senator’s wife

    Gardea, the co-founder of MindShiftED, an organization that helps parents become better advocates for their children with disabilities, said the upheaval at the Education Department has her wondering what kind of advice she can give families now.

    For example, an upcoming group session will teach parents how to file official grievances to the federal government if they have disputes with their child’s school or district about services. Now, she has to add in an explanation of what the deep federal cuts will mean for parents.

    Voozeki Gardea, who attends school in the San Antonio area, uses an eye-gaze communication device with the assistance of school paraprofessional Vanessa Martinez. The device verbalizes words and phrases when Voozeki looks at different symbols. Credit: Courtesy Maribel Gardea

    “I have to tell you how to do a grievance,” she said she plans to tell parents. “But I have to tell you no one will answer.”

    Maybe grassroots organizations may find themselves trying to track parent complaints on their own, she said, but the prospect is exhausting. “It’s a really gross feeling to know that no one has my back.”

    In addition to the office that oversees special education law, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is also housed at the Department of Education and supports employment and training of people with disabilities, was told most of its staff would be fired.

    “Regardless of which office you’re worried about, this is all very intentional,” said Julie Christensen, the executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. “There’s no one who can officially answer questions. It feels like that was kind of the intent, to just create a lot of confusion and chaos.”

    Those staffers “are the voice within the federal government to make sure policies and funding are aligned to help people with disabilities get into work,” Christensen said. Firing them, she added, is counterintuitive to everything the administration says it cares about. 

    For now, advocates say they are bracing for a battle similar to those fought decades ago that led to the enactment of civil rights law protecting children and adults with disabilities. Before the law was passed, there was no federal guarantee that a student with a disability would be allowed to attend public school.  

    “We need to put together our collective voices. It was our collective voices that got us here,” Kovach said.

    And, Rodriguez said, parents of children in special education need to be prepared to be their own watchdogs. “You have to become the compliance monitor.” 

    It’s unfair, she said, but necessary. 

    Contact staff writer Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].

    This story about special education 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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