Head Start has served children and families for more than 60 years, helping children build strong foundations for lifelong success while supporting parents and strengthening communities. Here in Southeast Tennessee, as the local Head Start provider, Family Resource Agency provides these services to 428 children and families through 30 centers and 34 classrooms across Bradley, McMinn, Meigs and Polk counties.
But the cost of providing those services continues to rise.
As Congress considers fiscal year 2027 funding for Head Start, our experience shows what those rising costs look like on the ground. Maintenance, insurance, facilities, technology and transportation have all become more expensive, making it harder to stretch limited federal funding while maintaining the services children and families depend on.
Maintenance costs increased 27%, while local travel, including fuel, increased 17.5% from fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2025. These are essential, nondiscretionary costs of keeping our program operating and serving families.
Workforce pressures add another challenge. Our Head Start teachers earn approximately $25,000 less per year than their counterparts teaching kindergarten in public schools. Recruiting and retaining qualified educators is difficult at those wages, and when classrooms cannot be adequately staffed, families can lose access to an early learning option they rely on.
Congress provided roughly $525 million less for Head Start in fiscal year 2026 than federal officials had assumed when developing new workforce requirements, adding to the financial pressure on local programs.
A 4.97% cost-of-living adjustment for Head Start, along with quality improvement funding and support for rising operating costs, is among the funding priorities being sought for next year. For programs like ours, those resources affect critical matters such as staffing classrooms, maintaining transportation and keeping services available to families.
For Southeast Tennessee, these funding decisions are ultimately about whether local programs can continue providing children with stable classrooms and families with dependable early learning, health, nutrition and family support services.
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann has seen that impact firsthand. In August 2025, he visited a Head Start program in Morgan County and spent time reading to children. In 2022, he also helped secure federal funding that expanded Head Start capacity at the James A. Henry School in Chattanooga from 60 to 100 seats, calling Head Start “very successful” and saying it puts students “in a much better position for success.” As a member of the House Appropriations Committee and its Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, he has a direct role in the federal funding decisions that affect programs like ours.
As Congress works through the fiscal year 27 appropriations process, Tennessee’s congressional delegation, including Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Sen. Bill Hagerty and Fleischmann, will help shape decisions affecting Head Start programs and the children and families they serve.
For families in our community, these decisions can help determine whether the services they have counted on for generations remain available when they need them most.
Sherronda Thompson is Head Start Director at Family Resource Agency in Cleveland, Tennessee.