If Trump ends Head Start, 11,000 of Colorado’s most vulnerable kids could lose vital early learning

Once Maralyn Batz-Paz and her co-teacher have corralled all 16 of their preschoolers onto the round gray reading rug in the corner of her classroom at Clayton Early Learning, each morning carries on with a detailed routine, one that occasionally takes a rowdy turn. After a flurry of crafting, building blocks and molding clay, students gather for a class meeting where Batz-Paz, a lead teacher for preschool Head Start, runs through attendance and leads her budding learners in a “wish you well” song for classmates who are absent.

Then, they break out into a chorus of affirmations, reciting together: “I am smart,” each pointing to their brain. “I am strong,” flexing their mini muscles. “And I am kind,” folding their hands into the shape of a tiny heart close to their chest.

“I want the kids to remember that they are strong, that they are smart, that they are kind, even in situations that they feel that they might not be, they can remind themselves that they are,” said Batz-Paz, who has been teaching at Clayton Early Learning for two-and-a-half years.

Batz-Paz’s classroom and the Denver school it belongs to is much more than a space for learning. Students follow their teacher in mindfulness exercises, breathing deeply, stretching and moving through yoga poses. They eat cooked-from-scratch breakfast and lunch every weekday. They get regular dental checkups, and vision and hearing screenings. Their families can grocery shop for free, nutritious food at a campus market and pick up clothing and diapers for their children when needed. And they receive home visits from their teachers every year as a way to form deeper relationships and bridge their learning from school to home.

Many of those services and resources are staples of the national Head Start program, which prepares kids in their earliest years — primarily those from low-income households — to begin kindergarten on stronger ground, particularly as a growing body of research points to how critical brain development is during the first years of a child’s life. But early childhood educators across Colorado worry about the future of instructing and caring for Head Start students, following preliminary reports that the Trump administration plans to strip program funding from his 2026 budget proposal.

The Trump administration aims to dismantle Head Start as part of a broader set of major funding cuts across federal health programs, according to a draft of the Department of Health and Human Services budget reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday. Final budget decisions are up to Congress, but scrapping Head Start — one priority outlined by the conservative Heritage Foundation in its Project 2025 policy playbook — would put many critical early learning programs in jeopardy and marks President Donald Trump’s latest swipe at federal funding for education.

Families up against difficult circumstances, including those struggling to make ends meet and single parents raising their children, would bear the brunt of the fallout, said William Browning, President and CEO of Clayton Early Learning.

“These families are already economically challenged and trying to find their way in the world,” said Browning, whose preschool provides Early Head Start and Head Start to more than 350 children in Denver. “So from an economic mobility perspective, suddenly eliminating the ability for them to find good quality care for their child will impact their ability to hold a job, to be able to pursue education, to be able to find better footing.”

Federal funding lag hits Head Start centers, including Clayton

The potential end to Head Start, a 60-year-old program that serves children ages 3 to 5, and its companion program, Early Head Start, for kids from birth to age 3, comes at a time Colorado has prioritized investing in early childhood education. The state launched an expanded preschool program, known as universal preschool, in 2023, though its debut was bumpy. As of mid-February, this year’s program has served more than 42,500 4-year-olds with nearly $174 million of state funding, according to data provided by the Colorado Department of Early Childhood.

Even with the state’s commitment to preschool, however, the loss of Head Start and Early Head Start would be a forceful blow to more than 11,000 of Colorado’s most vulnerable children and families, said Heather Frenz, executive director of the Colorado Head Start Association.

Backed by more than $119 million in federal grant funds, 50 early childhood education providers in 34 Colorado counties offer Early Head Start and Head Start, according to the Colorado Head Start Association. 

By Thursday, some Head Start providers across the country, including Clayton Early Learning, wondered if the end of federal funding might be closer than they initially anticipated. Browning told The Colorado Sun that after a recent attempt to request payment from the federal government through the standard payment management system they use, an unusual response popped up: The organization will receive its payment in March 2026.

Browning said it is unclear if that 11-month lag is some sort of technological fluke or if it’s the first sign of a true funding halt. That kind of payment delay would force his organization to adjust its operations and provide more private-pay care as a way to subsidize programming for low-income families, which would limit how many families most in need of Head Start could keep their child at Clayton Early Learning, he said.

Frenz said she worries about some Colorado facilities potentially shuttering or at very least losing seats for kids should the federal government slash Head Start. Unlike 14 other states, Colorado does not contribute any state funding to Head Start programs and does not have the budget “to make up for that loss,” Frenz said.

“Because we are dependent on federal funds, most programs could not survive very long,” she said. “We’re talking weeks to months.”

That doesn’t automatically mean that every child who belongs to a Head Start program would be shut out of all early childhood education programs, Frenz cautioned. Some Head Start students could continue accessing some level of programming through other sources of funding, including the state’s universal preschool program and the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program. However, several Colorado counties in recent months stopped enrolling new children into the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program because of a funding shortfall.

Loss of federal funding could start cascade of problems

Early childhood educators and proponents across Colorado say the possibility of losing Early Head Start and Head Start programs poses a cascade of worrisome consequences — depriving children of opportunities to learn foundational skills for elementary school, putting some early child care centers at risk of closing and straining local communities where child care is essential for working families.

Denver nonprofit Early Milestones Colorado surveyed nearly 300 licensed child care providers in February and March to better understand the role federal funding plays in supporting their services. About 20 providers who took the survey said they receive Head Start funding while other providers indicated that they benefit from a variety of other federal funding streams, such as CCAP.

The survey found that without federal funding, 1 in 3 providers who responded would not survive more than six months.

Jennifer Stedron, executive director of Early Milestones Colorado, predicts the loss of Head Start would take a severe economic toll on some communities, particularly those with few providers and in places where a significant portion of children benefit from Head Start and other federally funded programs, including the Colorado Food Program.

“The ripples are tremendous, not just on the child but on the family, on the local workforce and economy,” Stedron said. “The ripples go on and on.”

Stedron said she also questions who would step in to take over the long list of responsibilities shouldered by facilities that run Head Start programs, which provide a much deeper well of support for kids and families than other preschool programs. 

“You hear families time and again talk about how important these programs are for them and for the community,” she said. “It’s not just a program where you just drop off a child and wave goodbye and wonder what happens.

“I think even more than K-12, these are supporting families in so many ways and it becomes a real community. It’s true that it takes a village to raise a child, and that comes to life in Head Start and Early Head Start.”

“It gives me peace of mind to be able to pursue my dreams”

Most of all, the end of Head Start would harm individual kids whose first years have already been riddled with hardship, Frenz said.

Those children in particular need strong and “dependable” child care and relationships to set them up for success in kindergarten and later in life, Frenz told The Sun.

“They rely on these relationships to make sense of the world,” she said. “So if they lose a caregiver and it’s quickly, if these closures were to happen quickly, that’s devastating to kids who have already had losses in their lives.”

Head Start students experience a range of challenging circumstances, including poverty with many students’ families living at or below the federal poverty threshold. Some Head Start participants are homeless. Others live in foster care, have a disability or are part of a household where English is not the first language.

Support for families extends well beyond school grounds. Clayton Early Learning staff help parents wanting to earn their high school diploma later in life find GED preparation programs. They connect families lacking stable housing with shelters. They teach parents and caregivers how to advocate for their child once they enter the K-12 system. And they begin tending to kids before they’re even born, offering prenatal services to expecting mothers and providing families with mental health support as they prepare to welcome their baby.

“When we know that families have challenges or they need other supports, then that’s when we sort of step in and ensure that they have that at home and then at school,” said Paula Smith, chief impact officer of Clayton Early Learning. “When people say, ‘if children just have the one person in their life, then they have an opportunity to be successful because they know that somebody loves them. They have a safe place.’ And so that’s who we are for these children and these families.”

On any given school day, Clayton Early Learning’s campus bustles with the shrieks, screeches and squeals of young children learning how to use their voices. While toddlers in one classroom gather around their teacher for storytime before taking turns squeezing oranges to make juice, some of their classmates down the hallway bop around against a backdrop of live music.

Teachers plan out every hour for students, whether they’re getting a routine dental checkup, sitting down with their classmates for a homemade meal or learning how to cut an orange.

Batz-Paz, the Head Start teacher who guides her students through morning affirmations, whirls around her classroom in constant motion from the first moment her students arrive each day until their last minutes together. She said she has seen her students absorb her lessons and carry them into moments throughout the day — sometimes completely unexpected.

Earlier this week, the class pet, a fish named Rainbow Poppy, became sick and stopped swimming. Batz-Paz said her students knew the end of Rainbow Poppy’s time with them was coming. One of her students told the class, “we should wish him well” in the same way they sing their “wish you well” song each day for kids who aren’t able to make it to school.

“For her to say we should wish Rainbow Poppy well just shows … that a silly little song to some makes a big difference in their life,” Batz-Paz said, adding that much of what they learn in Head Start are “foundational skills” for the rest of their education.

Iran Munoz Montoya, a single mother of two boys attending Clayton Early Learning, said teachers there have been front and center in helping her kids navigate a tough start in life. After she became a single mother a couple years ago, her son Yair struggled to regulate his emotions, prompting her to begin a parenting course offered by Clayton Early Learning and also turn to the preschool to find a therapist who explained Yair’s behavior and advised her on ways she could help him cope.

Munoz Montoya, 24, said Clayton Early Learning, through its dual language focus, has also given both her sons the chance to preserve their native Spanish-speaking skills while they rapidly build up their comprehension of English vocabulary.

Munoz Montoya, who works as a medical assistant at a Denver pediatric clinic and is a full-time nursing student, now considers Clayton staff an extension of her family as her sons’ teachers have taken the time to get to know them and she sees how deeply they care. Without them, she said she would not be able to chase her career.

“The comfort that I get knowing that my kids are going somewhere where they’re going to be safe, they’re going to learn, and they’re going to come back smarter and happier every day, it gives me peace of mind to be able to pursue my dreams while they’re being taken care of,” she said.

While facing so much uncertainty, Browning and his team of leaders have devoted much of the year to planning for more than a dozen different kinds of prospective funding scenarios, including no more federal Head Start funding, which he refers to as the worst-case scenario.

Browning said he doesn’t expect that Clayton Early Learning — which relies on federal, state and local funding as well as charitable donations and social enterprise dollars — would close. But watching federal funding yanked away at a time the business model behind early childhood education is already fragile would still devastate many families and providers, he said, putting the future of many children on the line.

“It is really about economic security and national security for the country,” he said. “If you want to spend more money on the K-12 system remediating kids who just aren’t ready then you can do that, but it’s a much wiser business case to pay up front and make the investment up front.”

Still searching for answers Thursday as to whether Clayton Early Learning would have to wait almost a year for its next payment from the federal government, Browning said he couldn’t comprehend how to explain to kids and parents desperately needing Head Start “the heartless and ruthless cut to their future.”

“I don’t understand how you can look in a child’s eyes in our school, if you’ve been to our school, and tell that kid, ‘Sorry, you don’t deserve this shot.’”