SEATTLE — For Trejsa Stewart, the Head Start program wasn’t just a help, it was vital. Her eldest son had been hurt at a daycare to the point of warranting a Child Protective Services investigation. Head Start helped her find a new place to care for her kids.
“I wouldn’t have gotten through that without the family support. They walked me through the process, and they helped me enroll somewhere safe,” Steward.
Because of the program, she’s gotten help and the needed therapies for two of her children’s learning disabilities that required individualized learning plans. Between those plans, and now a third kid needing daycare while Stewart finishes her graduate degree, she couldn’t afford the care without Head Start.
“It’s hard on us because as a college student, if this gets cut, so does my education,” Stewart said.
Head Start is a program that grants money for lower-income preschool, childcare, and kindergarten seats. Washington State Head Start and ECAEP director Joel Ryan says it also helps adults with housing and job placement — 15% of the families have experienced homelessness, and another 18% of the children have developmental delays or disabilities.
“Head start helps that family become stable through case management,” Ryan said. “It’s a multigenerational intervention program that supports the entire family. That’s not something that can be made up in another place.”
This week, six federal Head Start workers in Seattle were told they were on administrative leave until June, at which point they would be fired, according to the Executive Director of the Washington State Head Start and ECEAP program, Joel Ryan.
Ryan was in communication with the employees when they couldn’t get into their office in Columbia Center in Downtown Seattle.
“The regional staff we’re trying to get into the office and were denied access,” Ryan said.
The cuts are part of 200 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employees laid off, according to Senator Patty Murray’s office. Last week, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. announced the department will be reduced by 20,000 employees.
“As part of President Trump’s DOGE workforce reduction initiative, we’re going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective,” Kennedy said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Kennedy said the cuts would help “return HHS to its original commitment to public health” in the post, saying there were too many bureaucratic positions and not enough scientists and front-line health workers.
“Every day I wake up and think, am I going to be able to drop them off today? Are the doors going to be locked? Am I going to wake up to that email saying Hey, we’re sorry for the inconvenience, but Head Start is no longer. That is a daily worry,” Stewart said.
Ryan says he knows Head Start programs that are waiting on grants for facility improvements around food storage and allowing kids to play on the playground. Stewart’s childcare has been waiting on a grant for sensory toys and other toys for kids with disabilities.
“Now that it’s closed, we don’t get anything?” Stewart wondered, “That not only affects the center, that affects me. Both of my children who go there have disabilities. That isn’t fair.”
KIRO 7 News reached out to HHS several times for comment on Tuesday, asking to clarify how grants will be renewed, awarded, and administered to the 70 programs that rely on them across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. The agency did not reply by the time of this posting. Ryan says the best-case scenario, one that he sees as unlikely, is that the federal office will pick up the slack. In the worst-case scenario, delays in grants or a lack of grant money altogether, programs would shutter completely.
“You’ll see more people experiencing homelessness, you’ll see more people experiencing joblessness and unemployment because many people rely on Head Start,” Ryan said, “It’s affordable childcare to help parents go to work. If you pull the rug from under parents, especially single parents who need Head Start, that makes it harder for them to be able to go to work.”
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