Revisiting Head Start as a Cornerstone for Early Learning & Development: Emerging Challenges & Opportunities

This session was a follow-on conversation from another session last May — also focused on Head Start — that was part of our “More Hopeful Futures or Children as Collateral Damage?” series. Across eight sessions, this series has sought to center children in the multiple policy shifts and federal funding cuts impacting communities. In the nearly six months since that prior session, Head Start has continued to be in the headlines as a result of multiple congressional and administrative actions impacting the program — both positive and concerning. In this week’s session, we picked up on the ideas from that previous session while also reviewing the recent actions and impacts for programs on the ground. 

Moderator, and CGLR State Lead, Lori Masseur of Read On Arizona launched the discussion by engaging with Khari Garvin, former Director of the Office Head Start at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden administration and current President and CEO of Family Services, who was also a speaker on the May panel. Garvin was able to bring the two conversations together by emphasizing the broad impact of Head Start as a poverty amelioration program that has always gone beyond early learning to supporting whole family health and wellness. Masseur then welcomed Carrie Gillispie, Ed.D., of New America into the conversation to share the facts and figures of recent congressional and administrative actions affecting Head Start. Gillispie explained the challenges of states not receiving operational funding for Head Start during the federal shutdown and the opportunity of the Head Start for America’s Children Act of 2025, introduced recently by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). Both Garvin and Gillespie also discussed the 60-year history of Head Start, with Garvin reminding attendees of the program’s purpose at its founding and the dangers of challenges to its funding and existence: 

“Head Start, yes, it is a program, but it is also part of the prescription that our nation wrote to end poverty. And there are more than 1,600 agencies across the country who have raised their hand to say, we want to join in this effort. We’re going to partner with the federal government to help eradicate poverty. So this assault that we are seeing on the Head Start program is really causing a problem. It’s not just simply disrupting the experiences of children and families, but it is really having a terrible impact on our ability to combat poverty.” 

Masseur continued the conversation with both a state and local Head Start Leader and a national Head Start leader. Eve Del Real, Ph.D., is the Director of Head Start with Southwest Human Development in Phoenix and the President of Arizona Head Start Association. Deborah Bergeron, Ph.D., is Deputy Director at the National Head Start Association and former Director of the Office of Head Start at HHS under the first Trump administration. These two leaders shared their experiences with multiple programs on the ground. They described how those programs are facing the current challenges and using the agility and innovation that Head Start programs have always had to develop local partnerships to keep their doors open.  

All panelists then engaged in a discussion about multiple topics and shared tips with the audience on how to advocate and get the public to care about and support early childhood to keep Head Start thriving. Del Real offered her perspective on a suggested way of framing the issue to ensure that the maximum number of people can understand the importance and the impact of Head Start: 

“I think it goes back to the framing…that early childhood in general is a preventative public policy initiative. We have to get back to that to ensure that we’re recognizing that there are preventions. There’s a lot of savings to the state and local governments when we are making investments in early childhood education. And I know it’s hard because there’s so many competing priorities, but unifying with your local Head Start associations or other advocacy groups for early childhood education is critical for us to be able to do that in a unified manner.” 

Many more important ideas were discussed by the educators who came together for this GLR Learning Tuesdays session, and we hope that you found it informative and engaging. Please review the resources and the recording made available here for more information and plan to join us again soon. 

If you were able to attend the session, we would love to hear your feedback! We appreciate your help in filling out the following form as we seek to learn and understand the perspectives, ideas, critiques and recommendations that better inform our key audiences.