KC-area child care sites will close if federal shutdown continues, leaders warn
Thousands of families in the Kansas City area could face a sudden end to their child care if the federal government shutdown continues.
About half of the Head Start early childhood education sites in the Kansas City area will shut down Nov. 1 if the government does not reopen by then, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and the Mid-America Regional Council announced Friday morning.
The Mid-America Regional Council currently lists 25 Head Start and Early Head Start sites in Clay, Jackson and Platte counties, serving a total of 2,300 children. They’re funded by federal grants distributed by MARC, where Lucas is on the Board of Directors.
Seventeen of these sites are set to shut down next month without a federal solution.
Head Start, a federally-funded program established in 1965, provides services to children from low-income households, those with disabilities, foster children and others.
If the sites shut down, Lucas said, at least 400 staff positions across all sites will also be eliminated. In a Friday morning statement, Lucas called the cuts “cruel” and said that Kansas City-area families who rely on Head Start will be “devastated by (federal leaders’) inaction.”
Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II noted in a press release Thursday night that Head Start also enables parents to complete workforce training and degrees while their children are on site. Among Kansas City’s Head Start parents specifically, 1,351 are employed, 169 are in training programs and 168 are enrolled in some kind of school, according to Cleaver’s office.
“Our leaders in Washington owe our children, our families, and our communities better,” Lucas said in a statement.
Missouri Head Start sites’ funding is renewed on a monthly basis, so they’ve continued to operate normally throughout the shutdown so far. However, Cleaver said that MARC had not received its monthly notice of funding renewal for November and that he wrote a letter to federal leaders urging them to reconsider.
MARC, and therefore each Head Start site, will not be able to “incur any costs” after Oct. 31 without the continued certainty of federal reimbursement, Cleaver said.
The potential closure of Head Start sites represents a sudden reversal in progress as the KC-area sites recover from recent cuts and closures. MARC had announced earlier this week that the 338 student spots eliminated when four previous Head Start sites administered by the Kansas City YMCA – all of which closed in May, to general outrage – had been fully redistributed among other sites.
MARC had also been building toward opening Head Start sites around themes and special interests, including a “faith-based” site at the Mattie Rhodes Center and an art program at Render’s Hope Day School.
The Star reached out to several Head Start sites across the Kansas City metro Friday afternoon. None were immediately available for comment, though in at least one case it was because the site Head Start director was actively meeting with MARC about the shutdown announcement.
Kansas City Public Schools, which hosts four Head Start Sites, will be using district savings to fund the sites out of pocket and is prepared to do so through December, public relations coordinator Shain Bergan told The Star Friday.
“We are going to go into our reserve funds and make sure that our families have a place to drop off their kids and our staff have a place to be, even if the government doesn’t reopen before October 31st,” Bergan said. If the federal government is still shut down by KCPS’ winter break, Bergan said, the district will review its budget and decide whether emergency funding can continue.
The Independence School District, which hosts six Head Start sites, was not available for comment Friday.
This story was originally published October 17, 2025 at 2:28 PM.
