One California Head Start has closed and three more face imminent closure due to the federal government shutdown affecting about a thousand very-low-income children and 270 teachers.
The closures would force families scrambling for child care and teachers without income. The longer the shutdown drags on, the more programs are at risk of shuttering.
A Head Start program in Santa Cruz County has already closed, upending child care arrangements for hundreds of families.
Encompass Community Services, a Santa Cruz nonprofit, was forced to close all 11 of its Head Start programs on Thursday because no one at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was available to process the group’s November 1 grant renewal or send money.
The centers, mostly clustered around Watsonville, serve some of the lowest income families in the region. About 300 children are enrolled in the program.
Three more Head Start programs in California – in Los Angeles, the Central Valley and the far northern part of the state – also have November 1 grant deadlines and face imminent closure. Another four programs with December 1 deadlines would be the next to shutter, if the federal shutdown continues.
