By KATLYN PROCTOR
Eagle Times Staff
CLAREMONT, N.H. — In light of the Trump Administration’s proposed federal funding cuts, a large group of local child care leaders gathered Friday, April 25 at Claremont Head Start for a roundtable discussion with U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan — and one thing was made perfectly clear: Any cuts to Head Start would have dramatic effects on Sullivan County.
“I think it’s really easy to be dismissive of early childhood education because we’re sort of obsessed with the minutiae of life. But the truth is, if you don’t go to school and you don’t know how to use the toilet, all of a sudden, you’re in special education,” said Marianne Barter, chair of NH Child Care Advisory Council. “If you go to school and you’re still biting people then yeah, you’re going to have a behavior management plan.”
Claremont Head Start boasts three classrooms full of learning enrichment activities. In one classroom, students had planted seeds, watching them come to life. Another one was full of hundreds of books and bright-colored furniture. Within these walls, emotional and social learning takes place beside the standard early-learning curriculum, an important piece of the process often overlooked.
According to the Southwestern Community Services’ January 2025 Economic Impact Report, 135 children ages 3 to 5 in income-eligible families in Sullivan and Cheshire Counties received Head Start services for program year Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024.
The wait list for each classroom is at least 50 kids long. But soon enough, Head Start could be shuttered, the kids displaced with no alternatives in sight.
“One of the purposes of this visit is just to highlight the work you do, is to make sure that I’m hearing from all of you kind of what you know, what you don’t know about the administration’s plans, what has already happened in terms of funding slowdowns, freezes and staffing adjustments,” said Sen. Hassan. “I want to hear kind of what the state of play is, how things are going, but I also want to be able to take back to my colleagues in Washington a real understanding based on what’s happening on the ground here in New Hampshire about what these cuts would mean so we can fight against them.”
Roundtable attendees included Beth Daniels, CEO of Southwestern Community Services; Nancy Bates, the city’s finance director and interim Claremont co-city manager; Marianne Barter, chair of NH Child Care Advisory Council; Vicki Muszynski, finance director at Green Mountain Children’s Center; Amanda Sears, Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy; Kerry Belknap Morris, Southwestern Community Services board member; Bagdat Caglar, director of Southwestern Community Services Head Start; Claremont Mayor Dale Girard; Jackie Cowell, executive director of Early Learning NH; and Laura Chase, assistant director of Green Mountain Children’s Center. Each leader had the opportunity to air their concerns.
“Everything that Head Start does supporting the child is not going to be there in child care centers either. So that family piece, that making sure that family supports are provided and they establish their goals … we work really hard to make sure that families are achieving their goals to move on with whatever means they have,” explained Bagdat Caglar, director of Southwestern Community Services Head Start. “The impact on the children, the impact on the families, the impact on the communities that we serve … these children that we are working so hard to get them ready for kindergarten, they’re gonna be going in diapers. Children, they’re not able to talk. They were not able to articulate their basic needs. We have experience after COVID [with] many children coming in with so many delays in all areas of development, language, overall developmental delays, and so forth. Our job is to make sure that we are identifying and hooking them up with services so that they can get those services to grow and develop.”
Already, the Trump Administration has shut down several regional Head Start offices including the office that serves New Hampshire, inciting anxiety about what the future holds.
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) joined 41 of her colleagues on Friday in sending a letter to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calling out the Trump administration’s direct attacks on Head Start and demanding the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services immediately release Head Start funding and reverse the mass firing of Head Start staff and gutting of the offices that help ensure high-quality services are available for thousands of children and families across the country.
The joint letter stated: “We believe it is obvious that eliminating Head Start would be detrimental to hundreds of thousands of children and families. 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. In our view, that is unacceptable. Therefore, we urge you to immediately reinstate fired staff across all Offices of Head Start, and cease all actions to delay the awarding and disbursement of funding to Head Start programs across this country.”
Health care is intricately entwined with child care, and rising costs of health care was a concern, especially as threats to Medicaid loom on the horizon.
“Often, the workers in the [child care] workforce often qualify for child care subsidies as part of their income. Also, most of their children are on Medicaid. I know it’s a whole big other issue, but it’s one of those ripple effects where almost all of the child care workforce’s children are on Medicaid with the Children’s Health program,” explained Amanda Sears with the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy. “So, when you put together potentially cutting Head Start and potentially Medicaid … the ripple effects of those, they start to be not ripples, but gigantic waves.”
