“FRUSTRATING ... CLAUSTROPHOBIC ... HELPLESS”
In a new place and without a
job, Orlow placed her younger
child, Emma, in Head Start. Emma
blossomed socially and benefited
from the tooth tutor program. Orlow was freed up to start a selfmanagement company.
That dynamic held steady
through this spring, until sequestration forced the closure of the
local Head Start summer program.
Facing the prospect of her family’s
life being upended once again,
Orlow was spared when a local
preschool agreed to take on the
displaced Head Start kids.
“If not for this partnership, my
daughter would have been out
at the beginning of this summer
and I would be scrambling,” she
told The Huffington Post. “People
don’t realize that you can come
from a place where you are making a lot of money, and suddenly a
wrench is thrown into the works
and you lose everything. It is places like this, Head Start, that help
you get on your feet — not just the
kids, but your whole family.”
For Head Start officials, life under sequestration has been spent
trying to ward off the worst for
families like Orlow’s. But the efforts
to minimize pain have come with
a significant and perverse political
HUFFINGTON
07.21.13
risk: The smaller the universe of
those directly affected by the cuts,
the less likely it is that Congress
will be compelled to find a sequester fix. And right now the parents
most likely to be harmed by the
Head Start cuts are those trying to
The impact on the
Head Start community …
has been demoralizing,
so much so that the
association has begun
running a mental health
webinar to help
with depression among
Head Start staff.
get their kids into the program, not
those with children already there.
In Washington state, Head Start
officials estimate that 68 percent
of providers will be forced to reduce the size of their classes. But
the actual reductions are expected