QUICK SIGNATURE: Head Starts are Closing

Head Starts are Closing, the Shutdown Must End NOW!

President Trump put in gold bathroom fixtures and poured champagne at his Great Gatsby themed party alongside his billionaire buddies. All of this as the government shutdown continues to drag on, threatening access to food, health care and child care for millions of families and children across the nation.

Just this week more than 8,000 children in 15 states and Puerto Rico lost access to Head Start , and 143 Head Start programs serving 58,627 children across 41 states are facing looming closures. Dozens of Head Start centers are now missing out on federal grant payments that were due to arrive November 1st and centers around the country are beginning to cease operations, with some closed indefinitely while others are staying afloat with emergency funding from local governments and school districts.

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Say NO to Billionaires over Head Start: CLICK NOW to urge Republican leaders in Congress to IMMEDIATELY end the shutdown, fix the health care and SNAP crisis, and restore Head Start funding!

Dear member of Congress,

As the government shutdown continues to drag on, access to food, health care and child care for millions of families and children across the nation are at risk. MomsRising members from across the country urge you to immediately end the government shutdown, fix the health care and SNAP crisis, and restore Head Start funding.

Just this week more than 8,000 children in 15 states and Puerto Rico lost access to Head Start, and 143 Head Start programs serving 58,627 children across 41 states are facing looming closures. Dozens of Head Start centers are now missing out on federal grant payments that were due to arrive November 1st and centers around the country are beginning to cease operations, with some closed indefinitely while others are staying afloat with emergency funding from local governments and school districts.

On Monday four Massachusetts Head Start centers serving 550 children closed and 150 staff members were furloughed. Every Head Start center in Little Rock, Arkansas has closed, as well as several rural programs in Ohio, Iowa and Florida. More than 1,100 children in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama and Oklahoma have been shut out of centers that also saw the furlough of 900 staff members.

Parents are having to miss working at much-needed jobs because they don’t have childcare – and kids are losing out on learning.

One of the most heartbreaking aspects of these closures is the jarring disruption to care that the littlest learners are having to experience. Continuity of care is a crucial part of healthy child development and these needless disruptions harm not only access to consistent child care, they hurt family stability and economic security, and cut off access to nutritious meals, physical and mental health checkups, and other vital support that Head Start provides. In many rural and frontier communities, Head Start is also the only reliable early learning and child care program available to families.

Head Start has experienced decades of a bipartisan commitment to our nation's children with this year marking the 60th anniversary of a program that is the most important social and educational investment in children, families, and communities the United States has ever undertaken. Yet today, parents are left scrambling to figure out how to go to work as their child care is taken away.

Families need Head Start and families need health care. We call on Congress to do the right thing for families and our country by opening the government immediately, restoring funding back to Head Start programs so parents can go to work and children can access the fundamental care they need.

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