Uplift National Head Start Awareness Month this October by taking action to protect this critical program!
Tell Congress: Call on HHS to stop RFK’s attacks on Head Start!
A federally funded, community-based program, Head Start has provided over 40 million children with quality child care, healthy meals, medical screenings, and early developmental support services (and so much more!) over the last 60-plus years. Yet instead of helping kids who need it most by supporting Head Start, Secretary RFK Jr. is proposing deregulating and gutting core standards that would put the program at serious risk.
For decades, Head Start has provided services for vulnerable children from low-income households, children facing homelessness, and those in foster care, helping to break cycles of poverty. In fact, low-income children who attend Head Start are almost 3% more likely to graduate from high school, 8.5% more likely to enroll in college, and 39% more likely to graduate from college.[1] These proposed changes would especially harm the children eligible for Head Start who need the most support, kids with special needs, by allowing for larger classes, less protective staff-to-child ratios, and reduced specialized supports.
The letter we are sending the U.S. Congress states the following:
Dear Representative Dan Newhouse and Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell,
Last weekend the Administration announced the firing of hundreds of Department of Education federal staff who provide critical educational access support for children with disabilities. This means fewer protections when students with disabilities face exclusion, harassment, discriminatory discipline, and barriers to access and inclusion in education. Without federal oversight, states could begin ignoring or weakening disability rights laws altogether.
The Education Department already severed nearly half of its staff this past March and now have laid off just about every employee responsible for administering funding and overseeing the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which serves more than 8 million children nationwide.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has provided access to free, quality education to children with disabilities, early intervention support for infants, toddlers, and their families, and ensured access to special education & critical supportive services since 1975. Prior to the protections enacted by this landmark legislation, U.S. public schools accommodated just 1 out of 5 children with disabilities and many states even had laws excluding students with disabilities! 3.5 million disabled children who attended school were forced into segregated facilities that provided little or no effective instruction and 1.8 million children with disabilities had no access to the public school system at all.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the IDEA yet instead of celebrating progress, our nation is facing the dismantling of the very infrastructure created to protect children with disabilities, pushing millions of children back to a time of segregation and systemic refusal to provide educational opportunities.
Congress has a long bipartisan history of funding federal efforts to ensure children with disabilities can equally access education, this is why it is crucial that elected officials such as yourself help fulfill this essential congressional role of funding & overseeing these programs—and hold the Department of Education accountable. The Department of Education is meant to be the keeper of IDEA’s promise, not the architect of its demise.
We urge you to put pressure on the Trump administration to reinstate staff and transparency at the Department of Education and help right this egregious wrong and protect children with disabilities throughout the nation who depend on these critical programs to learn, grow and thrive.
Join us to rise together and protect the services kids and families need. Thank you for all that you do!
– Nadia, Lauren, Nina, Hanna, Donna, Kristin, and the whole MomsRising.org & MamásConPoder Team
P.S. Are you a Head Start parent, provider or alumni? Do you have a child with special needs who benefitted from Head Start? Share your story with us to make a difference!
References:
[1] HeadStart.gov Head Start 60th Birthday Fact Sheet
MomsRising Together, 12011 BEL-RED ROAD 100A, Bellvue, WA 98005, independently of and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.