At their meeting last week, Eagle County commissioners approved Early Head Start’s federal grant application for 2026.
Early Head Start is a federally funded program administered by the Office of Head Start. The program supports low-income pregnant women and young children through services like free preschool and nutrition and health guidance.
But a federal government mandate banning work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion made the application more complicated this year.
In March, the government announced it would not approve funding for any Head Start applicants that used DEI-related terms in their grant applications. The list of banned words also included “dual language learners”, “bilingual”, and “accessibility.”
The directive to avoid the term “accessibility” is particularly confusing given the Early Head Start program’s mission, said Kendra Kleinschmidt, the director of Eagle County’s Early Head Start program. Federal rules require that at least 10% of children in Early Head Start programs have disabilities. She noted that the requirement hasn’t changed.
“Our program is designed to support children with disabilities — that's what we do. We're required to do it at a certain level,” said Kleinschmidt. “So why that word is included in there is beyond my understanding.”
The anti-DEI mandate is part of a sweeping set of changes to the program at the federal level. The Trump administration has shuttered half of the regional Head Start offices nationwide, laying off 70% of the program’s federal workers. It also declared that the program should be considered a federal public benefit, which would prevent undocumented pregnant women and children from enrolling.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a statement about the change. “Today’s action changes that — it restores integrity to federal social programs, enforces the rule of law, and protects vital resources for the American people.”
But in September, federal judges in two separate lawsuits blocked the move, ruling that the administration had not followed the appropriate procedures for changing rules and that the changes would cause significant harm to families and providers.
Due to the pending lawsuits, Eagle County has not had to change how it runs its Early Head Start program or the criteria for enrollment.
But during Kleinschmidt’s presentation, Eagle County commissioner Jeanne McQueeney noted the cuts will have an impact locally, calling the 70% reduction in the federal workforce serving children and pregnant moms “startling.”
“All of the people who are in the background to support you and to help with coaching and professional development and guidance,” she said. “They're all gone.”
McQueeney compared the cuts to those affecting the U.S. Forest Service earlier this year.
“I’m feeling that our children are not getting the same recognition for the cuts as our forests did,” she said.
