Campaign for Grade-Level Reading
LEO Team
“These are critical years for child development — yet [HR 1] would disproportionately harm our youngest children, children of color, and those from working-class families. The cost isn’t just policy — it’s children’s lives.”
– Rocio Perez, Policy Analyst, UnidosUS
“And how are the children?” That traditional Maasai greeting is at the heart of a series of webinars hosted by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR) in 2025. Amidst wide-ranging debates about the existence, size, and function of the U.S. Department of Education; proposed policy shifts and/or funding cuts to core child-serving programs such as Head Start, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); accelerated immigrant detention and deportation; and a flurry of executive orders, this webinar series has sought to illuminate and center the impact on children and their families. Will these shifts bring about more hopeful futures for children growing up in economically challenged, fragile, and otherwise marginalized families or will these children become collateral damage?
Over the course of eight sessions — including seven GLR Learning Tuesdays sessions and one Funder-to-Funder Conversation — CGLR featured 46 policy experts, child advocates, researchers, practitioners, and philanthropic leaders in conversations that engaged 1,330 individuals around this question. Taken together, the sessions illuminated how current policy debates — across education, immigration, health care, early childhood services, nutrition, and rural investment — are reverberating in the lives of children and families. Recognizing the interconnectedness of these issues in the lives of children and families, 423 individuals joined three or more sessions in the series.
This webinar series was a call to clarity and action: Across systems and sectors, children’s well-being must remain the central measure of our choices. As policymakers, educators, advocates, funders, and community leaders in the CGLR Network and beyond navigate a turbulent landscape, these sessions underscore a collective responsibility — to ensure that decisions made today create more hopeful futures for children, not collateral damage.
“Head Start, yes, it is a program, but it is also part of the prescription that our nation wrote to end poverty. There are more than 1,600 agencies across the country that 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 on the Head Start program is really causing a problem. It’s not simply disrupting the experiences of children and families; it is really having a terrible impact on our ability to combat poverty.”
–Khari Garvin, Former Director, Office of Head Start, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; President and CEO, Family Services
The More Hopeful Futures or Children as Collateral Damage? sessions included:
- More Hopeful Futures or Children as Collateral Damage? U.S. Department of Education: The series launched with a session examining the uncertain future of the U.S. Department of Education (USED) at a moment when its existence, size, and responsibilities were being debated. Panelists revisited USED’s historic role and focused on the consequences for children if critical functions such as Title I, Title III, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act were fragmented or shifted to states or other agencies.
- Potential Implications of Accelerated Deportation: This session highlighted the academic, emotional, and developmental risks children growing up in immigrant families — 90% of whom are U.S. citizens — face as protections for sensitive locations such as hospitals, schools, and places of worship are rescinded. Panelists reviewed proposed and enacted policy changes and their impacts on children in immigrant families and highlighted the power of trusted messengers in schools, health care providers, and community-based and faith-based organizations in combatting misinformation about policies.
- Medicaid as Linchpin: Truth and Consequences: This session explored the profound role of Medicaid, which supports nearly half of all U.S. children and serves as a cornerstone of the nation’s health care infrastructure. Panelists unpacked how Medicaid connects children’s health to attendance, learning, and long-term success — and how threats to the program could destabilize hospitals, rural health networks, school-based services, and family well-being.
- Timely Support for Immigrant Families & Children: Philanthropy Strives to Meet the Moment: This Funder-to-Funder Conversation picked up on the earlier session focused on children in immigrant families as it drilled down into the roles that philanthropy can play and is playing in response to recent policy shifts. Panelists highlighted the 1 in 4 Project, which was launched this year to support the 1 in 4 children living in the United States who are part of immigrant families, and discussed how the Project is advancing policy advocacy and litigation, narrative building, and research and data.
- Head Start as Cornerstone for Early Learning and Development: This session engaged former directors of the U.S. Office of Head Start and others in a conversation about the program’s 60-year legacy of comprehensive services, family partnership, and whole-child development. Amid the political turbulence and federal funding freezes, panelists affirmed the importance of Head Start as they discussed opportunities for strengthening and evolving the program to expand its reach and deepen its impact.
- SNAP’s Far-Reaching Benefits for Children: This session highlighted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the country’s largest anti-hunger initiative serving more than 34 million people — nearly half of them children. Panelists examined how proposed cuts — many of which were later enacted under HR 1 — would disproportionately harm children in their earliest years.
- Disproportionate Impact Magnified: Rural America’s Children & Families as Collateral Damage? With a majority of CGLR community coalitions serving children and families in rural areas, this session highlighted the unique vulnerability — and resilience — of these communities with respect to policy shifts affecting USED, Medicaid, Head Start, SNAP, and digital equity programs.
- Revisiting Head Start as a Cornerstone for Early Learning & Development: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities: This session picked up on the earlier Head Start session as it responded to more recent legislative proposals, shifts in eligibility rules, and speculation about funding cuts. Panelists, including two former directors of the U.S. Office of Head Start, called for a bold reintroduction of Head Start as an essential part of the early childhood ecosystem — one that must continue to evolve, modernize, and remain anchored in its commitment to families with the steepest barriers.
“Like any relationship that we can think of, the strongest are grounded in trust and teamwork.
Same applies for parents and school-based leaders, teams, and educators.
Family engagement strategies need to be anchored in student learning and student well-being.”–Shana McIver, Learning Heroes
