Head Start programs face funding cuts. What does it mean for SLO County families?
Every day, San Luis Obispo County resident Darien Lohof drops his three-year-old twins Lucas and Miranda off for daycare at Nipomo’s Head Start classroom before setting out for his workday.
While Lohof heads to a pair of jobs as a sales representative and a copy writer, the twins start their days with a snack, a warm greeting from the Head Start program teachers and, most importantly, playtime.
Without the Head Start program, Lohof said working two jobs while his wife works another would be out of the question — and as a result, living in the county he’s lived in all his life would be out of reach.
“A place like this, the Head Start program, is just a godsend to folks like us that are paycheck-to-paycheck, hand-to-mouth kind of kind of people,” Lohof said. “College degrees be danged, it still costs about an arm and a leg just to live in SLO County, let’s be honest.”
However, that lifeline may be cut by the end of this year.
Created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” Head Start programming has been operated by the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo since the nonprofit was founded by Johnson’s social programs that same year.
But in 2025, the program — which provides nearly 600 San Luis Obispo County children through age 5 with early childhood education, daycare services, meals, dental care and developmental and hearing screenings — faces a full federal funding cut that would leave around 800,000 children across the United States without its services, according to a draft of the 2026 federal budget leaked April 17.
In San Luis Obispo County, where child care already costs a premium and is rarely available, the cuts could have “catastrophic” effects for the working families who rely on the program, Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo Head Start program manager Adriana Barron Ramirez said.
“The children would lose that quality child care, those licensed facilities that keep them safe, those nutritious meals in the classrooms,” Barron Ramirez said. “Our families would be out of a job, really — we provide full day services to those families, and children are in care for eight to 10 hours a day in our our programs.”
Head Start program scrambling to maintain funding
While the draft budget is not finalized and the Head Start cuts are not confirmed to be happening yet, CAPSLO said it’s preparing to lose all funding for the program.
The move to end Head Start funding comes as part of a series of cut around a third of the federal U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ discretionary spending in the 2026 budget — cuts that will reach San Luis Obispo County down the line, Barron Ramirez said.
In the week since news of the planned budget and its cuts to Head Start broke, the potential move has drawn condemnation including a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. signed by 41 senators including California Sen. Alex Padilla.
“We believe it is obvious that eliminating Head Start would be detrimental to hundreds of thousands of children and families,” the senators’ letter read. “Similarly, we believe it is obvious that delaying funding like we have seen over the last two months, forcing Head Start programs to close, and leaving families to scramble to find quality, affordable alternatives puts the education and well-being of some of the most vulnerable young children in America at risk.”
With the program’s fate undetermined until next year’s federal government is finalized and approved, several program staff members said their futures — and the futures of their students — are uncertain for now.
Lead teacher Luis Abelino, who’s been with the program since 2008, said he’s concerned that the cuts will affect students early in their development down the line, leading to worse outcomes in learning reading, writing and social and emotional development.
“For us, we were in shock,” Abelino said. “Why would they cut this program?”
For some Head Start employees, ties to the program run deep, with several parents of program participants stepping into teaching roles down the line.
Nancy Sherrera, an associate teacher at the Nipomo Head Start program, said she started bringing her own children to the program 18 years ago at a critical time in her life.
Even then, child care still was cost-prohibitive to many San Luis Obispo County residents including Sherrera, who was fleeing domestic violence at the time, she said.
“My life is very difficult, and this program has supported me,” Sherrera said. “If I don’t have this program in this moment, maybe I don’t have nothing now.”
Hundreds of SLO County families could lose child care to funding cuts
Without Head Start, many working families face a childcare landscape in San Luis Obispo County defined by few openings and high costs.
Child care costs have never been higher in California, with the Economic Policy Institute estimating an average cost of $16,945 in 2024. Only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., saw higher costs on average, according to the institute’s analysis.
Part of the rising costs are driven by a shortage of available providers.
“We do not have enough child care in our county,” Barron Ramirez said. “Even with (transitional kindergarten), there are not enough open seats to serve the families.”
In 2024, CAPSLO’s Head Start and Early Head Start programs served a total of 591 children, with 135 of those children living with disabilities, according to a statement from CAPSLO.
CAPSLO also operates a Migrant Head Start program, which serves the children of migrant families in the area, Barron Ramirez said.
Migrant Head Start program parents must both work in agriculture, but can rely on the program to look after their children for 10 to 12 hours each day.
Roughly 447 working parents are supported by the program, which is staffed by 188 workers specializing in teaching, child care and program administration across 10 leased facilities, Barron Ramirez said.
Group sizes for the program are small, with teacher-to-student ratio of one to eight in the Head Start program and one to four in Early Head Start, Barron Ramirez said.
The program also employs nine food vendors to meet its nutritional needs, providing a total of 75,000 meals for program participants last year, she said.
In San Luis Obispo County, the price tag for the program is a total of around $20 million, supported by a combination of state and federal funds, Barron Ramirez said.
That’s an annual cost of around $17,000 each year for every for Early Head Start participant age zero to three and $15,000 per year for each for Head Start age three to five, Barron Ramirez said. Families living under Federal Poverty Guidelines — making no more than $32,150 for a family of four — can receive access to the program for free, she said.
Of that $20 million budget, federal cuts would eliminate more than $9..6 million, while another state child care funding stream of $4.2 million is also at risk, leaving the program without the ability to provide services at its current size, Barron Ramirez said.
CAPSLO urges public to speak up for Head Start
CAPSLO CEO Elizabeth “Biz” Steinberg said while the program cuts are daunting, the nonprofit is maintaining hope that a federal funding compromise can be reached to preserve it for the next generation of children.
Steinberg said she hopes members of the public will reach out to their elected representatives to tell them to fight to keep Head Start funded due to its longstanding service to the public.
Elected officials can be reached via the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.
“Because of all the bipartisan support this program has enjoyed for 60 years, we believe there still will be bipartisan support for Head Start and all the community action programs that are operated by CAPSLO,” Steinberg said. “It’s just going to take a lot of work.”
