By Suzanne Potter
Head Start teachers in California are speaking out about the chaos prompted not only by the government shutdown but by cuts to safety net programs.
The agreement to end the shutdown only funds the government through Jan. 30, so federally funded programs like Head Start face significant uncertainty going forward.
Tame Lewis, site lead teacher with P.A.C.E. Early Head Start at Aloha Learning Center in Gardena and a member of the California Federation of Teachers, said she works with low-income families every day.
“SNAP and Medi-Cal, it keeps them from falling into poverty,” Lewis explained. “The Head Start program allows them to go to work and not have to worry about that coming out of their paycheck.”
Help for low-income families is threatened on multiple fronts. The Republican funding bill signed last July cut billions from Medi-Cal and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, known as CalFresh in the Golden State. And it allows subsidies for health plans through Covered California to expire at the end of this year.
Covered California, in a statement, said it expects costs to almost double for millions of families. Nationally, more than 20 million people rely on subsidies to afford health plans sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
While Head Start in Gardena is funded through next June, other Head Start programs, including three in California, have had to close during this shutdown. Lewis noted she has weathered other shutdowns in her 15 years at Head Start but this one has been the worst.
“It’s scary, because you don’t know where your future lies,” Lewis observed. “This is what I’ve basically been doing all of my life. So, it’s kind of scary because I don’t know what I would be doing next if Head Start was to end.”
As of 2022, more than 260,000 people worked for Head Start nationwide. California receives more than $850 million a year in federal funding for the program.
