The City of Oakland Head Start program is worth fighting for.
Oakland is one of the few cities in the United States that operates Head Start directly through its own municipal government. That structure gives Oakland families direct local accountability over a federally funded program that elsewhere is administered at arm’s length. It also means Oakland Head Start is uniquely exposed when federal funding is destabilized.
Saving City Jobs and Defending Oakland Head Start (2021)
In late summer 2021, Parent Voices Oakland learned that funding cuts to the City of Oakland’s Head Start program would close three sites and eliminate 100 child care slots. We sprung into action. In coalition with the Anti Police-Terror Project, ACCE, SEIU Local 1021, IFPTE Local 21, and the Oakland Progressive Alliance, we won a budget resolution restoring the funding. Oakland City Council passed the resolution unanimously, securing $1.86 million to keep the sites open, and saved 50 city jobs. Click here for KTVU coverage.
Federal threats and the ACLU lawsuit (2024–2026)
Beginning in 2024, the federal threat environment changed sharply. The Trump administration began dismantling Head Start through directives that gutted program staff and resources, delayed federal funding, and in 2025 attempted to exclude immigrant families from a program that has served every eligible family for sixty years.
In April 2025, Clarissa Doutherd, ED of Parent Voices Oakland, joined a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against the Department of Health and Human Services, as a named plaintiff alongside Family Forward Oregon and the Head Start associations of Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, the ACLU of Washington, the ACLU of Illinois, the Impact Fund, and co-counsel.
In Alameda County alone, thousands of children and hundreds of jobs depend on Head Start, and more than half of the children in these programs come from immigrant families. A federal judge has since granted a preliminary injunction blocking the administration’s directive to exclude immigrant families while the litigation moves forward. As Executive Director Clarissa Doutherd put it: “Immigrants are threaded through the fabric of our communities, and threatening them tears communities apart.”
The fight continues
Oakland Head Start is suffering from years of disinvestment, and federal pressure is now compounding it. We want a robust program that serves communities with the deepest need, that welcomes every eligible family regardless of immigration status, and whose future is shaped by the parents and workers directly impacted.
