A more than $1 million federal grant will keep Walla Walla Public Schools’ Head Start program alive through December.
But the disruptions that led to the grant trouble school district officials, who say the lapse in predictable funding under the Trump administration cost them a third of their Head Start teaching assistants and makes it harder to convince families to enroll students.
“The uncertainty for us is: How heavily and how aggressively do we recruit (families) for this program that may not exist the following year?” said Brent Cummings, Walla Walla Public Schools’ community outreach and partnerships coordinator. He also works at the Walla Walla Center for Children & Families, which houses the Head Start program.
Created in the mid-1960s, Head Start offers free childcare and early education for students from low-income families.
Joel Ryan, the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Washington State Association of Head Start & ECEAP, said the Trump administration has tried to dismantle Head Start.
The administration initially proposed scrapping the program altogether. It has since sought to erode Head Start from the inside, Ryan said.
“One way to do that is to gum up the grants, slow down guidance and regulatory support,” he said.
In April 2025, amid a broader reduction in the federal footprint, the administration shuttered half the regional Head Start offices, including the Seattle office that served Walla Walla — which now works with the Denver, Colorado, office — and put employees on administrative leave.
Head Start programs typically operate in a five-year grant cycle. Walla Walla’s program received about $2 million each year. The grant application usually opened in the spring, but the past two academic years have passed without a chance to submit one.
For the 2025-26 school year, Walla Walla Public Schools operated on a 10-month extension of the last five-year grant.
Then, as another year wound down without the next year’s funding locked in, district staff grew nervous.
Normally, the district gives employees “reasonable assurance” that their job is secure. When the district couldn’t do that, four of twelve Head Start teaching assistants left. The extension grant was set to expire June 30.
Once the interim grant became available, the district had a week to apply — but the portal to submit the application didn’t open until the day before.
“We were sweating bullets,” Cummings said.
When the Center for Children & Families’ principal announced the money had arrived, messages of relief flooded the email chain, he said.
The grant is just a stopgap, though.
“If a family asks us, ‘Well, are you going to be in operation this whole year?’ all we can say is, ‘Yes, we hope so. … Money in hand is what speaks in terms of program sustainability,” Cummings said.
The regional Head Start office has assured him that if an application for a long-term grant doesn’t open before December, the interim grant can be extended for six more months, he said.
Northwest Public Broadcasting reached out to the federal Administration for Children and Families — part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — for comment. A spokesperson said the ACF, through its Office of Head Start, plans to publish a notice of funding opportunity this fall.
Walla Walla Public Schools doesn’t yet know at what point it would have to lay off staff, or consider ending the program, according to Janette Jeffris, the district’s director of fiscal services.
“If we do not have any information by Oct. 1, I will start really pushing for answers again,” she said in an email.
Meanwhile, the district must replace the four teaching assistants so it can fill its 116 Head Start slots. Regulations demand one staff member for every 10 students. Finding a fully credentialed candidate right before a new school year might be unrealistic, Cummings said.
“I’m confident we’ll find quality people to fill under the positions,” he said. ‘The question is: Will we have that quality early-learning certification in place, or will we need to spend a year or two to backfill that in, redeveloping the relationships with our students and families along the way?”
Read the audio transcript here.
