NC Newsline by Brandon Kingdollar

U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC 2) and officials with Wake County Smart Start toured a child care and learning center in southeast Raleigh Wednesday morning to raise awareness of imperiled federal programs supporting early childhood education.

Ross visited a classroom at Wanda’s Little Hands in Raleigh and read “Sheep in a Jeep” to a group of young children before joining a panel discussion with early education experts and stakeholders, part of a series of visits to facilities throughout Wake County whose federal funding is at risk. The tour came a day after she visited Hodge Road Magnet Elementary in Knightdale.

She said she was struck by the intelligence displayed by the young children she read to, noting that they not only followed the events of the story but were able to think critically about what they might do if they were in the same situation as the characters. Ross said her mother, who was a lifelong early childhood educator, impressed upon her the importance of teaching these skills at an early age.

“I’m preaching to the choir by telling you how important early education is for success later on in school,” Ross said. “Early education is also child care — it provides a way for parents to go to work, be able to care for their parents if that might be something they need to do, and they want to make sure that they have stable, excellent places to take their children.”

But Ross said federal cuts are putting these programs in jeopardy. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk has taken aim at programs supporting early education, with 20% of staff members with the Office of Head Start and 25% with the Office of Child Care losing their jobs earlier this month, part of wave of firings across the Department of Health and Human Services. These cuts come as the child care industry struggles to recover from COVID-19, which triggered a wave of facility closures around the state.

State and federal funding allows education centers like Wanda’s Little Hands to provide free pre-K learning programs to many families that could not otherwise afford them. With 67,000 children under the age of 5 in Wake County, seats in these programs are already challenging to find, and without federal support, the cost of raising young children can be unsustainable for many North Carolinians — according to Gayle Headen, the executive director of Wake County Smart Start, parents can spend more than the cost of in-state college tuition each year caring for their young children.

“If those cuts were to be enacted, these are real children who don’t have access to these seats, and that impacts not only the children; it impacts their families and it impacts other families who are looking for seats,” Headen said. “It’s a whole ecosystem that’s impacted.”

“We are definitely grateful to be of support for the families and the parents that come in — working parents, parents who might be in school, parents just coming out of situations — that we are to still provide the care they need for those students and for those kids,” said Wanda McCargo, the early learning center’s founder. “In this setting that we provide for them, in the small groups, it allows them to blossom and grow.”

Headen said Wake County relies on a blend of federal, state, and local funding to provide early childhood education, including through Head Start and Early Head Start programs, encompassing children from late infancy to age five — a critical period of development so they can succeed in kindergarten.

In an interview after the panel, Ross said she has already been told the federal Head Start program is having “tremendous challenges” making ends meet with the cuts to government spending and that some early childhood centers relying on HHS support have been forced to close due to a lack of funding.

Headen said applications for Wake County Smart Start’s pre-K programs fell last month in the immediate aftermath of the Trump administration’s funding freeze. “There’s just a lot of fear. Parents are concerned.”

Link to full article: https://ncnewsline.com/2025/03/20/deborah-ross-condemns-federal-child-care-cuts-at-education-center-in-raleigh/