WHEN Rickencia Clerveaux McClean’s son was around 18 months old, she noticed he wasn’t speaking the way she expected. He pointed instead of asking. He struggled with food textures. McClean looked ahead at his future in public school with some dread.
Fortunately, she said, there was an opening at Head Start at Action for Boston Community Development in Dorchester – the same program her younger sister had attended years before. Now her son is three, eating applesauce with his classmates and using his words.
“I feel like ABCD helped him navigate first before he was able to go to a public school,” said McClean, whose 2-year-old daughter is enrolled there, too. “That’s the best pathway for any kid who’s having a difficult time on their own.”
McClean, 27, is a student at Roxbury Community College working on the requisite classes for the nursing program. Head Start, she said, is what makes that possible.
She is among the lucky ones these days. Massachusetts has lost 1,300 Head Start slots over the last three years, as the federal government has level-funded the program, and there is worry that more seats could be in jeopardy.
The 60-year-old federally funded program for children from low-income families is navigating what advocates describe as a painful stretch of uncertainty.
The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, released earlier this month, includes $12.3 billion for Head Start nationally – the same level as the prior two fiscal years. While that has forced programs to reduce the number of families they serve, it is a retreat from earlier signals that the administration might seek to eliminate the program entirely.
“It has been an incredibly unpredictable year, from both policy changes to funding instability,” said Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, which advocates for Head Start programs in the state. “Flat funding itself is a pretty sharp cut to programs every year, given increasing costs from things like health care and rent and utilities, as well as the need to continue to raise wages for our educators.”
Head Start provides early education, health, nutrition, and family support services to children from birth to age five.
In Massachusetts, it serves more than 11,000 children annually across 28 programs and employs about 4,000 early childhood professionals, according to the Healey administration. Families receiving Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, SNAP benefits, or disability assistance, as well as children in foster care or experiencing homelessness, qualify automatically.
Massachusetts is one of the few states that supplements the federal program with state dollars, contributing $20 million on top of the $189 million in annual federal funding that comes to the state, according to the Healey administration.
The Massachusetts Head Start Association is asking the Legislature for a $4.56 million increase — enough to fund a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment for program staff.
“Just because you close a classroom here or there doesn’t mean the children aren’t there to fill it,” said Haimowitz. “Programs need to make terrible choices between access and being able to staff the classrooms they are able to maintain.”
State financial support has crept up in recent years, but Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed 2027 budget kept its recommendation at $20 million, as does the version advanced through the House on Wednesday.
“We know it’s a tough budget year,” Haimowitz said. “And at the same time, we need to make sure our programs have what they need to keep as many classrooms open as they can.”
Compounding that financial pressure is a bureaucratic disruption that began a year ago. On April 1, 2025, the Trump administration abruptly closed five of Head Start’s 10 regional offices, including the Boston office that had served Massachusetts and the five other New England states. Massachusetts programs were reassigned to the Philadelphia regional office, which now carries twice its previous caseload.
Haimowitz said several programs in the middle of federally approved construction projects have nearly missed contractor payment deadlines because approvals that once flowed through the Boston office have stalled.
“Those bureaucratic slowdowns can seem really minor, but if you’re a contractor who’s been hired to build a Head Start program and your check hasn’t been clearing — that’s not minor,” she said.
The funding pressure came to a head last fall, when the federal government shutdown cut off grants to six Massachusetts programs with November award dates. Four Head Start centers operated by Self Help Inc. in Brockton and Norwood closed, leaving roughly 550 children without care and more than 150 staff furloughed.
McClean, who sits on ABCD’s policy council, has been tracking the funding uncertainty alongside other parents.
“Everybody’s on the edge, because we don’t know exactly the certainty of what can happen,” she said. A Haitian immigrant trying to carve out an education and a life for her family, McClean said the Head Start program is not “just like a place you drop your kids. It’s a family. It’s a community.”
She said the program is not only crucial to her children’s development, but also makes it possible to work toward her goal of becoming a nurse. If her Head Start program is cut, McClean said, “I’ll have to drop out of school.”
This article is part of CommonWealth Beacon’s ongoing coverage of early childhood education issues and is funded, in part, by the Commonwealth Children’s Fund.
