California Congressman Fights to Protect Head Start Amid Project 2025 Concerns

Rep. John Garamendi is pushing to get more low-income Californians access to Head Start, and protect the program from getting potentially eliminated if Donald Trump wins the presidential race.

Garamendi introduced a bill last month that would change the eligibility requirement for Head Start, potentially opening up the early education program to 10,000 more California families. Children under age 5 currently qualify if their family’s income is at or below the federal poverty line, which is $20,440 for a single parent or $31,200 for a family of four.

“What are you supposed to do with that in California? You can’t, right?” asked Melanee Cottrill, executive director of Head Start California. Due to the state’s high cost of living, she said, thousands of families struggle even when their incomes are above the federal poverty line.

Garamendi’s bill would let families who qualify for WIC (the nutrition program for women, infants and children) and federal housing assistance – two programs that are not tied to the poverty line – become eligible for Head Start. For example, a single parent with an income of $37,814 is eligible for WIC.

Cottrill said the change would allow California to serve more children, even without spending any more money. Currently, the state serves 85,000 children but has a budget for 95,000.

She said the programs are under-enrolled for two reasons: families who don’t meet the income requirements and a shortage of teachers, which forces them to limit capacity.

“What we really love about this bill is that it gives us a broader pool of people that we can enroll in Head Start, but it doesn’t cost anything,” she said. “It’s just saying, okay, we’re going to change the eligibility a little bit so that in those really high-cost parts of the nation, particularly here, the eligibility requirements are a better reflection of the reality.”

Garamendi, a Democrat whose congressional district includes parts of Contra Costa and Solano counties, said he’s trying to protect Head Start in case Donald Trump wins the election and goes through with the proposal laid out in Project 2025, a set of policy recommendations for the next Republican administration, to eliminate Head Start. In the document, the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation states that it’s against “universal day care,” and prefers giving money to parents so they can afford to stay home with a child or pay for “familial, in-home childcare.”

Garamendi said Trump could use the appropriations process to defund Head Start.

“He is dead set on doing it, the people he’s hiring they’re determined to do it,” Garamendi added. “So we have to use every tool we can think of [to take] defensive action.”

He said his legislation, which would need the approval of the House, the Senate and President Biden, is crafted to guarantee funding for the program.

The bill “is seriously vetted across the nation with Head Start programs in virtually every state saying ‘yeah, expanded eligibility makes sense in our state,’” Garamendi said.