The True Cost of Reopening Head Start Classrooms
Significant investment necessary to support children and families through COVID-19
By: Yasmina Vinci, Executive Director of the National Head Start Association
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption in the lives of Head Start children and families, yet Head Start programs have not missed a beat. Many programs transitioned to remote services to meet the needs of at-risk children and families, delivering at-home learning materials, setting up meal drop-offs, providing diapers and formula, connecting families to telehealth services, conducting wellness checks, and more. Head Start services have been essential throughout the pandemic.
As one Head Start program director, Linda Bleything, explained in her testimony to Congress advocating for Head Start funding this spring,
“As we watch our communities adapt to respond to COVID-19, children and families are facing new challenges and need Head Start more than ever. Head Start programs have continued to operate remotely, serving the needs of both children and caregivers with delivery of food and sanitation supplies, provision of learning materials, and virtual home visits. While there has long been an urgent need to respond to children and families’ mental health needs, COVID-19 has dramatically compounded those needs.”
Linda’s testimony shows that Head Start has been there for families throughout this turbulent time, supporting them in navigating all the challenges that have emerged. Now, as COVID-19 continues to flare across the country, and programs continue remote operations or make significant accommodations to reopen classrooms, they need additional funding to safely meet the needs of children and families.
Recently, NHSA conducted a nationwide, comprehensive survey of Head Start program needs in order to quantify the costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. As programs approach a new program year and prepare to reopen their doors, the survey uncovered the extent to which programs have been confronted with a barrage of new challenges and costs. These changes — largely in the form of additional staffing, facility and transportation adjustments, and recurring sanitation costs — contribute to reopening costs that far exceed initial triage that was afforded by CARES Act funding. In fact, the cost of reopening Head Start programs and meeting increased health and safety needs through the calendar year is estimated to be at least $1.7 billion above usual operating costs.
Voices from the Head Start field
This summer, NHSA is convening virtual meetings of Head Start program directors in every state and U.S. territory to better understand the current realities for their programs. Their experiences supporting children and families through COVID-19 and the new costs they will incur to continue doing so safely underscore the urgency of securing COVID-19 relief from Congress.
Additional Transportation Costs
One director shared the challenges and associated costs specific to operating a highly remote Native program. “We serve four communities that are very remote. We have organized virtual trainings led by an Oklahoma company that specializes in trauma training for Native communities. We desperately need this training, given what we are seeing with our children and families, but we are worried staff won’t have Internet access to be able to participate. Also, quarantine restrictions between villages have been strict to try and keep the virus at bay. It is unclear whether these restrictions will prevent in-person training. Additional transportation is also a challenge given how remote we are.”
Increased transportation costs are common. “Since our children are so young, we need an adult on each bus in addition to the driver. But since the maximum bus capacity has been lowered to six, we are only able to have five children on each bus. This is incredibly expensive!” another director shared.
Challenges with Securing Facilities
Finding or adapting facilities adds another significant new cost for many programs. Some Head Start classrooms that are housed in local school buildings are now scrambling to find new spaces as the schools take over the classrooms to meet their own social distancing needs.
“Our programs have strong partnerships with the public schools,” one director explained. “Even so, we’ve lost our classroom space in two elementary schools because they need the additional classroom space to spread out their kindergarteners. So now we are struggling to quickly find new space that is affordable and safe. This has been disruptive and expensive.”
More Frequent Sanitization Procedures
In addition, increased cleaning costs are an unavoidable expense for any program reopening its doors. In order to take the necessary precautions to keep children and staff healthy, programs are sanitizing spaces more frequently, but they are finding cleaning supplies significantly more expensive and hard to find. Some programs are even hiring additional cleaning staff to keep their classrooms safe for use.
“Cleaning and cleaning supplies are a bigger investment in our budget than we’d originally anticipated a few months ago,” one director shared. “We’ve created a tracker to get a better sense of how many supplies are needed, but we know that costs will be increasing once more students enroll in the fall.”
“The price of cleaning supplies has tripled in recent months,” another director added. “We can’t even get the products we typically use due to shortages. We’re finding that alternative products can have restrictions on how they are used in places where young children touch, which takes more staff time to use properly. We are also looking at other additional options like UV cleaning and sprayers.”
Increased Staffing Needs
Then there are the increased staffing costs. Some programs need to hire additional staff to ensure they can continue operating should an existing staff member show symptoms of COVID-19 and need to stay home out of an abundance of caution. Others are breaking children up into smaller groups and need additional staff to make that possible. New expenses are also arising from increased mental health needs of families and staff, technology needs, and changes to meal time procedures in the classroom. All together, these costs create a significant and unprecedented financial strain for programs.
Every Head Start program across the country is faced with additional costs due to COVID-19, which amount to the need for an additional $1.7 billion in relief funding from Congress. These additional funds would provide the much-needed help programs require to implement a safe reopening and meet health and safety requirements, while not reducing enrollment of children to afford such changes.
Explore the details of Head Start’s funding needs at nhsa.org/true-cost.
