After chaos of funding freeze, Head Start directors fear cuts, elimination of ‘lifeline’ for children

If not for Head Start, Warda Chabouni of Aurora said she and her U.S.-born children might have ended up back in France and separated from their father by an ocean.

Support from the federally funded child care and preschool program gave her son a safe place to go every day, and it helped her find a job to support him and her school-aged daughter.

Chabouni had moved to the U.S. to be with her husband. After they split up, “I considered going back to France, but my kids were born in the U.S., and they have their dad here. I wanted to try to keep my life in the U.S., and I gave myself six months to find the solution,” she said. “Because of Head Start, I was able to have a life in the U.S. and have my kids grow up here.”

Head Start is different from other early education or day care programs because it doesn’t just provide classroom instruction, said Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, a nonprofit working to strengthen programs across the state.

“We work with those with the greatest needs in our community” while working with children in the classrooms, offering screenings and development for those children, Morrison-Frichtl said.

While Head Start and its sister program, Early Head Start, have enjoyed bipartisan support for decades, Morrison-Frichtl and others providing its services across the state are worried.

On Jan. 28, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing federal grants and loans. Many agencies logged onto their funding portal to draw funds allocated to their programs for payroll, and the portal didn’t work.

“The timing was terrible” for program managers trying to input their end-of-month bills to the payment portal, Morrison-Frichtl said. “They would put their own password into the [portal], and it was showing an error, not able to access ... or it would just spin with no access.”

The White House rescinded the order the next day, and federal judges have since granted injunctions to prevent the executive branch from freezing funds already approved by Congress. Most programs Morrison-Frichtl was in contact with were able to access the online portal by the end of the week, but problems remained for about 10 days in total, she said.

Still, Morrison-Frichtl and others running Head Start programs in the state said they are worried.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – seen by opponents as a blueprint for Trump administration federal program cuts – calls for eliminating Head Start.

“This has never happened in our history. We have never struggled with the federal payment system. People are nervous,” Morrison-Frichtl said.

Two Rivers Head Start serves Kane and DeKalb counties with locations in Aurora, Elgin and Sycamore, Director Kelly Neidel said.

She tried to log into that federal payment portal at 6:30 a.m. Jan. 28 and was not able to get in. Knowing she only had enough cash on hand to make payroll, she decided to close the following day and let staff know “they would be laid off until further notice,” Neidel said.

She then got on the phone with the Community Service Block Grant supervisor, Morrison-Frichtl and Gov. JB Pritzker’s office.

“They called and said, ‘Don’t close down,' ” and eventually Neidel said she was able to log into the system and make her payroll. Still, she laid off two office staffers to ensure that if the system crashes again, she can cover at least one payroll period.

At the Tri-County Opportunities Council Head Start and Early Head Start, the payment portal just spun, and then timed out again and again, Director Rachael DeSpain said.

And like Neidel, DeSpain began discussing what programs they’d have to close immediately to ensure they could pay bills if their contracted funding went away.

The Tri-County program services Bureau, Carroll, La Salle, Lee, Marshall, Ogle, Putnam, Whiteside and Stark counties – about 5,000 square miles.

DeSpain has not had to lay off any staff, she said, but since Jan. 28, she has lost personnel to other day care centers.

“They have not out-and-out said it was because of the program funding, but a majority are going to alternative child care centers,” she said.

Hiring for child care already is difficult in the state, where 4,300 licensed facilities have closed in the past decade. Hiring gets even more fraught if staff are worried that funding may be pulled without warning, DeSpain said.

“They are worried about their own families,” she added.

As a rural program, Tri-County’s clients and families have different needs, and the program differs from Two Rivers', she said.

“The resources available in larger communities, we might not have,” DeSpain said. “In the nine counties, there are less than five dental providers that accept the state dental insurance. We have an additional need for transportation,” as there is no Metra, Pace or even Lyft drivers to call on.

“If we don’t provide public transportation, they are not able to come” for services, DeSpain said.

There are other programs in the state that offer preschool programming, such as Preschool for All, and Illinois has mandated all-day kindergarten to begin with the 2027-28 school year.

Those programs do not and cannot offer the wrap-around services to families like Head Start can, DeSpain said.

“They don’t have the capacity ... or a program that offers comprehensive health, mental health, nutrition and education. Our programs are built around these community areas,” DeSpain said, adding that each family in the program has a community service worker assigned to them.

“We work with the whole family and not just the child,” Neidel said. “There is no way that [school districts] can provide the services of what we do.”

There also is some apparent fear among those working in Head Start to speak out about their concerns and fears for the program. Some programs in the northern Illinois region, including in McHenry County, did not respond to requests for comment.

“There is some fear and anxiety, and some of them are nervous about talking to the press and saying something wrong, with implications for their programs” for doing so, Morrison-Frichtl said.

Proponents of Head Start and Early Head Start say they can help a family by lifting them out of poverty. By law, 90% of their clients must fall below the federal poverty level. A single parent with two children cannot earn more than $26,650 a year to qualify, DeSpain said.

“When you talk to parents, they will tell you, straight out, that this is a lifeline,” Morrison-Frichtl said.