Maricela Ramirez was at an education conference in Washington, D.C., at the end of January when she and other attendees heard the startling news: Federal funding for Head Start programs, which provide early-learning and nutritional support for low-income children nationwide, had been frozen.
Ramirez, chief education officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, quickly contacted colleagues and realized it was true. They had tried to make a routine withdrawal of millions of dollars in funding the day prior, but it hadn’t arrived overnight as expected.
Ramirez said “stress and panic” quickly began to set in, both in her office and among the conference attendees all around her.
“Our team had to assess whether LACOE would have to shut down its programs and to determine where LACOE could find funding to pay its employees if the system continued to be down,” Ramirez recently wrote in a legal filing. Pauses in federal…
