Congress shouldn’t toy with early childhood education funding

I really don’t care much if the lawmakers in D.C. bicker all day until their faces turn blue. All I ask is just keep the kids out of it. But they haven’t.

By some estimates, over 28,000 low-income Georgia kids would be impacted with funding cuts to Head Start programs on the line in the government shutdown. It’s not just in Georgia either. Families across the country are beginning to feel the lack of oxygen in the room since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, stalling funding to crucial services and programs. Many programs nationwide would be closed in less than a month if they do not receive the critical grant funding.

Desperate times call for desperate solutions. The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta just announced it is stepping in to provide benevolent financial assistance to the tune of an $8 million dollar bridge loan. This will allow the recipients, which are the state’s three largest Head Start providers, maintain operations for 45 days.

But this is using Elmer’s glue and Popsicle sticks to fix the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Beth Collums has a professional background as a child and family therapist and a passion for offering support to families. (Courtesy)

Much like air traffic controllers and TSA agents, these preschool teachers fill an essential role in our beautifully diverse state. They serve families that are forgotten or unseen by our representatives in Washington. These kids don’t live on the same street or likely the same ZIP codes as our lawmakers so it’s easy for them to forget the thousands of innocent faces that won’t be sitting on polka dot rugs learning their ABCs anymore.

Consistency in care and routine has long been held as one of the biggest predictors of interpersonal functioning and school readiness. If these programs are disrupted and the care routine becomes inconsistent for thousands of kids in Georgia, that’s a problem. The potential costs include the employment of both the parents who use the service and care providers working for the programs and most fundamentally the long-term side effects of child development.

The Head Start programs serve children ages 3 to 5 and the sister program, Early Head Start birth to 3, in the most critical years of child development. The brain is developing at an explosive rate, creating billions of neural pathways in these years that cannot be recovered. By age 3, approximately 80% of the brain’s potential growth is finished, by age 5 it’s at 90%. It’s not simply X’s and O’s. Motivation, self-esteem, problem solving, self-regulation and communication are developed — or not developed — in these critical early years as well. We’re not just dealing with inconsequential babysitting here.

These low-income preschool programs keep kids safe, provide two meals a day and educate the children who would sometimes miss a meal or worse. The gains have been studied since the inception of the program six decades ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Hundreds of research articles describe the benefits: higher high school graduation rates, better long term health, increased likelihood of college matriculation, lower teen pregnancy rates, reduced rates of reliance on government assistance programs, lower criminality rates, more positive parenting habits, etc.

This educational program, though not beyond flaw, has proven to help break the vicious hold of generational poverty.

Head Start historically has had both parties’ support although with each administration’s changes in the standards, methods and format. Often celebrated as a true bipartisan success story, it’s continued since 1965. However, funding has been rumored to be on the chopping block through the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 legislative initiative under the Trump administration even beyond the current government shutdown.

The Head Start program isn’t superfluous, giving kids ponies and Air Jordans. Its purpose is to break the cycle of poverty through providing basic child care and education remediation up to age 5. The mission is to funnel school-ready children into pre-K and kindergarten with the social skills and academics to merge successfully into the classroom. No frills, it looks more like Cheerios in a Dixie cup than steak and gravy.

Thirty agencies in Georgia offer Head Start to help parents care for children while they’re at work. Working hard doing jobs that are paid less than the federal poverty guidelines; i.e. making less than $26,650 for a family of three. These are parents who are working hourly jobs like cashiers, shelf stockers and restaurant dishwashers.

The shutdown is more than D.C. chatter to them. It’s a weekly paycheck, it’s daily child care, it’s food in the fridge.

If Head Start programs close, these parents are presented with few options: Either don’t go to work which might mean losing a valuable hourly job, or leave the children in unsupervised or possibly unsafe hands. Just a few weeks ago, a heartbreaking story was reported where a mother went to work and left her child with an unlicensed in-home child care provider who fell asleep and the child was fatally mauled by dogs kept in a backyard pen. One might ask, what kind of parent would leave their child in this precarious situation? Hard working yet desperate moms, that’s who.

The options for some parents who need to go to work and can’t afford the astronomical cost of market rate day care centers are often grave. We have a duty and responsibility to step over the political muck and do all we can to advocate for the least of these.

Beth Collums is an Atlanta-based writer. With a professional background in child and family therapy, she often writes about mental health, relationships and education.