BUTTE — A nonprofit based in Butte that serves six counties in southwest Montana and includes programs like Head Start says that changes at the federal level are impacting their services.
"Ever since my son started Head Start he has progressively gotten, like, smarter. He’s learned things faster, like, his speech has gotten better. I’ve just watched him progress in all of his milestones," says Nicole Babbitt as she walks to the front door of her three-year-old's school.
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Babbitt is one of almost a million parents across the US who has a child enrolled in Head Start’s federally funded, comprehensive preschool program that serves working-class families and children with disabilities. Babbitt says as a single mother, the program has been a big help.
"They are really, like, supportive with making sure your kids are where they need to be because I’m not with them during the day so it’s nice to know that you have that support and help to make sure they are reaching where they need to be," says Babbitt.
Last week, President Trump signed an executive order freezing funds for programs like Head Start. Earlier this week, a federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration's attempt to pause a lower court’s order that temporarily halted the funding freeze but the threat of shuttering programs is still present.
"The threat is not necessarily immediate—Head Start is open for business, but I do think it’s important for the community to know since the new administration came in that all of the services we provide are under threat of not being funded," says Margie Seccomb, the CEO of Action Inc. an organization that serves 6500 people in a variety of programs including Head Start and employs almost 100 people.
"There is a list of words that we’ve been made aware of that the new administration is using to determine whether or not agencies like ours are using words that don’t—to use their language—align with the new administration’s values," says Seccomb.
According to Seccomb, some of the hundreds of words on the list reportedly include "female, women, Indigenous communities, and disabilities," to name a few.
Seccomb says Action Inc. has been asked to scrub their websites of the words on the list.
"I think we should all be alarmed about that," says Seccomb. "I’m inviting people to think, what are the next steps after those cuts, what then and then what then? If you take your thinking further you will see that what this leads to is suffering and unrest."
