Potential Federal funding cuts could jeopardize preschool program that helps families in need

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Head Start provides early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income families, but it's funding could get slashed after an upcoming budget vote.
  
President Lyndon Johnson launched a “War on Poverty” in the 60s.

“We've taken up the age old challenge of poverty, and we don't intend to lose generations of our children to this enemy of the human race,” said the late president.
 
Head Start was established in 1965 as a result. since then, its served  more than 55,000 children from low-income families throughout Santa Barbara County.
  
Communify is the non-profit that runs local Head Start programs.
 
CEO Patricia Keelean says 90% of it's funding comes from the federal government.
 
“Lyndon Johnson set the stage for a war on poverty so that we could address issues related to education, food security, housing for our most vulnerable populations. And it feels like there is now a war on the people who are suffering from poverty in America,” said Keelean.
 
The trouble for Head Start began when federal funding was frozen early in President Trump's administration.
 
Some centers closed temporarily.
 
An upcoming House budget vote could gut the program entirely.
 
Susana Del Toro says the Goleta location was her second childhood home. Decades later, she now is Site Supervisor there.
 
“My mom would drop us off. She would join us on field trips. So this is amazing place to grow up,” said Del Toro.
 
Del Toro says defunding the program would have negative ripple effects for the local economy.
 
“If those parents can't go to work, then other places continue to be short staffed. Right. Have you gone to a restaurant where you're waiting and waiting and waiting because. we're short staffed like it's it's everywhere, you know, from social services being short staffed and things not getting processed in time like it's happening everywhere,” said Del Toro.
  
This week, the Health and Human Services Office in San Francisco that oversees Head Start in California was shuttered amid mass layoffs in the department.