AUSTIN – Lockhart mom Vivian Dimas was looking forward to rejoining the workforce as a medical aide in the next few months, as the cost of groceries and other expenses continue to rise and her husband’s income from his construction job is barely enough to cover the bills.
But she’ll be stuck at home for the foreseeable future as her childcare lifeline – the free federally funded Head Start program their 2-year-old son has been attending since infancy – evaporates on Friday. With that comes an end to the early childhood education, health screenings and meals he gets through the national program.
Head Start programs in Texas provide services to more than 65,000 children. Some of those programs will be forced to close on Friday because of the federal government shutdown. The interruption will impact low-income parents who rely on the services.
“With work and everything being so slow, and the bills – they don’t stop,” said Dimas, who has three children ages 4 and under. “I was going to step up and bring in some income, but with the government shutdown it won’t be possible.”
The Head Start program run by Community Action Inc. of Central Texas in rural and suburban Hays and Caldwell counties is facing imminent closure as it ends its funded year Oct. 31, but it won’t get its new federal grant money on Nov. 1 because Congress has yet to pass its budget for the next year. The funding covers the organization’s $600,000 monthly costs to run Head Start.
Breaking News
If the shutdown doesn’t end before the weekend, the Central Texas organization’s Head Start program will have to shutter – potentially for months – six out of its seven free childcare sites.
That will leave the program’s 448 area children ages 3 and younger, mostly low-income, without an affordable option in the more rural areas between Austin and San Antonio, said Danielle Engelke, Head Start program director at Community Action Inc. of Central Texas. One site connected with a school district will stay open.
Some 390 families will be affected by the closings, she said. More than 280 of those children are on public benefits, including SNAP, the food benefit for families whose net income is at or below the federal poverty line that runs out of money this month, she said.
Nearly 60 of her program’s children are homeless, 35 have disabilities, and 11 are foster kids, she said.
“This will affect our most vulnerable,” Engelke said.
The program is one of 134 Head Start programs nationwide – including at least three programs in Texas – that have the same Nov. 1 grant cycles and won’t get their funding renewed at the end of the week, according to the National Head Start Association. The national group did not release full lists of sites that would be impacted, only the number of children and staff affected in each state as of Nov. 1.
In Texas, there are 1,933 children in services that can’t get funding after this week, in nearly every area of the state. Some 560 kids could be affected in the Texas Panhandle, about 300 in the Rio Grande Valley, and 319 in Central Texas, according to a Congressional map released by the national association. The map did not specify how many of the state’s nearly 1,500 sites could close after this week.
Nationally, Nov. 1 shutdowns at those sites could affect up to 65,000 young children who receive “critical early learning, nutritious meals, childcare, health screenings, and other vital services” through Head Start, according to a statement by the association. That’s nearly 10 percent of all Head Start classrooms.
“For thousands of families, Head Start is not optional—it is essential. With each passing day of the shutdown, families are pushed closer to crisis,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the association. “Families may have to forgo days of work and their employers may be affected as well. Congress must act now to end the shutdown and protect these children, families, and communities.”
In Texas, the Head Start program serves 14,423 children in early childhood Head Start programs and another 50,738 in Head Start preschools at 1,267 sites. Federal funding to Texas alone tops $800 million.
Some of CACT’s plight is just unlucky timing. The program’s grant cycle starts on Nov. 1 each year, the day the federal Administration for Children and Families – run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – releases the funds for the program to draw down and keep paying the bills.
That can’t happen until Congress reopens the government and passes its budget, which is not likely by the end of this week, as House Speaker Mike Johnson has put his chamber on indefinite hiatus.
Once the government is funded, shuttered Head Start sites in Central Texas should be able to reopen because the organization is on a five-year grant cycle and still has two more years of funding promised.
Programs run by other organizations have their own grant cycle start dates, most of which are not Nov. 1 – but many are on Dec. 1, while others end their cycle in January.
Still others have months to go. They’re the lucky ones.
In Central Texas at Engelke’s program, nearly 130 Head Start employees, many of them parents, will be laid off Friday – including herself, Engelke said.
The hardest impact to stomach, agency directors said, is the closing of a Head Start program for children of domestic abuse survivors in a women’s shelter. The site cares for 16 children of single moms and provides not only early childhood education but also support services.
“Not only do they lose the child care, but one of the requirements for the transitional housing is that they have a job,” Engelke said. “If they can’t go to work, what’s going to happen? If we have to close, they’re going to lose so much of their support system at that site alone. That is really my most vulnerable site.”
Site director Katie Childs says the situation is devastating. Not only will she have to turn away mothers and children already in crisis, but she and her five staff members will lose their jobs.
“The children are not coming to school on the 31st because we were truly going to have a professional development day, and that has now turned into a day where we are going to be shutting down the classrooms,” Childs said.
The center has no local funding. All of her students are 2 or younger.
“All of our children have experienced some sort of domestic violence. They are high-need and high-risk. They have all left a violent situation,” Childs said. “And out of my employees, four out of the five are single moms, and they’re extremely worried because this is their livelihood.”
Childs helps financially support her aging parents, but she is single and has no second source of income to pick up the slack ifshe loses her job, she said.
But her biggest worry is the women and children she serves, who are in the shelter because they had no family safety net to fall back on. All of them also rely on federal SNAP assistance, also known as “food stamps,” that is set to dry up next month.
“It’s going to start having a ripple effect,” Childs said. “They are really going to be in a bind.”
Childs, other site directors and the folks in Engelke’s office are working to pull together resources for the affected families – from connecting them to food pantries and other services to setting them up with mental health resources.
Watching her families go through such an upheaval after surviving a domestic abuse situation breaks her heart more than anything else, along with the inability to help make their lives brighter after such trauma, Childs said.
“We love working with the kids, having these babies run up to us, hug us, say they love us, and just seeing their moms be so grateful to have somewhere safe for their children to go,” Childs said. “Somewhere that they know they’re being cared for and loved and taught in a high quality manner. That’s something that’s invaluable to our families.”