Head Start providers opened their Chicago homes to help young kids learn. Now that’s all at risk

The eight young children enrolled at the Growing Up Green Daycare know Patricia Anaya as their teacher.

She also steps in as their nurse and principal — plus, chef, gardener and janitor at the Southwest Side preschool and childcare center she runs in her welcoming brick bungalow as part of the federal Head Start program.

But the 60-year program providing early childhood education for kids from low-income families has come under attack in the Trump administration’s year one proposed budget.

So Anaya, the mother of two daughters, has added that worry to the top of her to-do list.

Joining Head Start in 2021 has let her offer her families benefits far beyond basic daycare or typical preschool. And it has afforded her a way to cut back from the 80 hours she once worked every week to make ends meet as a provider of standard daycare.

What that means is that Anaya shows up as a better teacher for everyone in her care and remains committed to a critical field that research shows sets up young children for greater success in school and in life.

“I feel less stress — a lot less stress, and I enjoy what I do a lot more because I think I was heading towards burnout,” says Anaya, 43. “By now, I would think I would have burned out, and I probably would have been looking to exit the field. So it’s kept me going.”

The future of Head Start

Head Start was founded 60 years ago as a critical tool in the War on Poverty. It now serves about 750,000 children nationally from infancy until kindergarten, with 28,000 in Illinois. Its participating childcare centers are subject to tight rules enforced by employees in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Their numbers have been cut, including the Chicago-based office supporting six midwestern states, in what Trump officials have characterized as streamlining.

Project 2025, the 900-page conservative blueprint the Trump administration has been following to reduce the role of the federal government, makes a clear recommendation to “eliminate the Head Start program.”

As of April, an early budget proposal from President Donald Trump zeroed out all Head Start funding. The administration has since backed off, and the National Head Start Association says the latest version, released May 30, calls for the same funding as the last two years. (This is separate from the fight over what Trump calls his “Big Beautiful Bill” awaiting a Senate vote.)

Given the slim majority held by Republicans in Congress and this president’s propensity to change his mind, the situation remains precarious not only for Head Start families, but for home-based providers like Anaya.

Six of the eight children at Anaya’s care are enrolled in Head Start for 3-5 year-olds, or in Early Head Start for 0-3 year-olds.

“I thought we were fighting for everybody to have a head start,” says Sonja Crum Knight, of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a Chicago-based social service organization that secured the federal grant, and lends support to 21 centers in its network including Anaya’s.

“Now we’re fighting just to make sure that those who have access maintain it, you know? It’s just unfortunate.”

The littlest learners

When Anaya started as a childcare assistant 18 years ago, she had two small daughters. Opening her own center at home meant she could be around her girls while working.

“I realized early on, like childhood goes by in a flash so I just wanted to cherish every moment that I could with them,” she says. “That was very important to me.” Her own mother had operated a daycare center.

She chose her bungalow on a quiet West Lawn block — with its bright basement, separate rear entrance and fenced-in backyard — for its potential to host children.

On a recent Friday, all four children at Anaya’s are under three, still too little for preschool. But hardly too young to learn.

What can a nine-month-old learn at school? Alani and her parents are working on games and exercises to encourage her crawling. For Leilani, almost 2, and Levi who’s already 2, it’s talking.

Lia, who turns three this summer, rattles off the colors she likes, as she decorates a cardboard box with markers.

Anaya and her two assistants — her 22-year-old daughter, Penelope, who lives with her upstairs, and Anaya’s mother, Maria, who walks over from next door — constantly scan the room, observing everyone’s progress. Anaya’s younger daughter, Ely, also sometimes lends a hand.

The classroom is designed to spark all kinds of discovery. Picture books hang on walls, library style, so the covers face outward. Shelves of toys sit low, their tops no higher than a grown-up’s thigh so the kids can reach for themselves.

Anaya’s “Good Morning” songs, sung using a furry purple puppet, reinforce Spanish as well as English for her dual language students. The morning’s storybook about a construction site expands vocabularies with words like “rubble” and “bulldoze.”

Even music sneaks in simple directions to follow and motor skills to practice — everyone pretends to be sleeping bunnies who hop then jump then skip — plus foundational math with a 5-4-3-2-1 countdown in a “Floor Is Lava” game the children find hilarious.

Beyond a line of baby gates, the back section of the basement hosts an office, where Anaya keeps her desk, and its cubby-lined lobby where visitors are asked to sign in and cover their shoes for the babies who are still crawling.

Recess takes over the backyard, before lunch and naps. On this day, Anaya serves baked bucatini pasta, with broccoli, watermelon and milk, a meal she’s able to prep ahead of time. Earlier in the week, she was up at 6 one morning cooking caldo de res, a Mexican beef stew, before children began to arrive at 7.

‘Much more than childcare’

Everything Anaya and her assistants do is intended to help little students hit a series of developmental milestones — and then get them extra support if they can’t.

For example, babies should be able to sit up and make babbling sounds by 9 months. By 2 years, toddlers should be able to use a spoon, run, and string two words together.

“What Head Start really aims to do is not only provide the child that safe, secure, high-quality learning environment, but also partner with families so that they also recognize what a child is learning in those very, very early months and years, to really support their development as they continue to get older,” says Julissa Cruz, also from the Carole Robertson Center.

The Carole Robertson Center gives its providers a wide range of wraparound support far beyond what a standalone basement childcare could afford on its own.

For the providers, the partnership brings curriculum, tech support, and other help to keep up with federal rules, including around health and safety. It also provides some office equipment because “we want the educators in our network to have sustainable businesses, and sustainable programs,” Knight says.

Then, for the children, Knight’s colleagues offer a slew of holistic services: health screenings like vision and hearing checks, and attention to nutrition.

For parents, there’s feedback not only from Anaya but one-on-one help from “parent support specialists” who work with the families, and from other experts, who take a two-generational approach.

“It’s so much more than just child care, and that’s what our partnership with [the] Carole Robertson [Center] and Head Start has done,” Anaya says over the clatter of lunch. “It takes us from just being child care to high-quality early childhood care and education.”

What the research says

Not all childcare centers do this kind of early education right, experts say. But when they do, they see results.

As of a year ago, the Department of Health and Human Services touted research showing how three-year-olds at the end of Early Head Start performed “significantly better” on a series of measures than a randomly assigned control group. Early Head Start students also “tended to have the best overall outcomes” at the start of kindergarten.

Families prefer home-based care for its familiar culture, says Juliet Bromer, a research professor at Chicago’s Erikson Institute who’s long studied home-based childcare. Parents also don’t like having to change locations and trusted caregivers when it’s time for preschool.

But children — even babies and toddlers — still need more than just daycare.

Before becoming a Head Start provider, Anaya had to care for children on two shifts, morning and afternoon, to earn enough. Since joining forces with the Carole Robertson Center, she’s been able to offer a better teacher-to-student ratio, bolstered by the center’s expertise.

Bromer’s research has shown that childcare providers that were part of such networks “offered higher quality care” than unaffiliated providers.

Head Start’s value has been in how it “recognized how important early childhood years are and how important it is to have a system that supports families and children,” Bromer says. “And if that were to go away, I can’t really think of another system that gives us that vision.

It could be improved, Bromer says, “just like so many of our systems need to be improved.” Among the most cited critiques are that programs don’t last the whole day or the entire school year — or that quality isn’t uniform.

“But getting rid of it,” she says, “also gets rid of this vision.”