A Head Start teacher and students in class in California. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today
Head Start received a reprieve Tuesday under the new Congressional budget agreement that would restore some, if not most, of the funding cut from the national child care program last spring.
Head Start lost about 57,000 slots for children, including more than 5,600 in California, because of cuts under federal sequestration, a program of automatically triggered, across-the-board spending cuts. These cuts have continued to ripple through Head Start operations month by month as they cycle through their federal grant processes.
“It’s good news, in that we will not see additional cuts this year,” said Rick Mockler, executive director of the California Head Start Association. But the deal, which must pass Congress and be signed by President Barack Obama, won’t fully restore the 5.27 percent cuts to California Head Start programs made under the sequester, he said.
“We don’t have a (budget) number yet,” said Mockler, noting that it might be a restoration of about 50 percent of the cut funding. Funding for programs is to be decided in the next few weeks, as appropriations committees in Congress work to allocate spending under the new agreement, if and when it is passed.
Head Start, which serves about 106,000 California children, has been operating in a degree of fiscal uncertainty since Congress failed to pass its 2014 budget in October, triggering a brief