Almost one year after promising to bring Head Start services to hundreds more children across rural east central Illinois, the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission is still struggling to fill classrooms and hire teachers.

Head Start is a federally-funded early education program that provides services to low-income children and families to help prepare children for kindergarten. Its funding has faced administrative disruptions in 2025 under the Trump administration, including a temporary federal funding freeze and staff reductions at the Office of Head Start.

In November 2024, the regional planning commission took over the federal Head Start grant for Ford, Iroquois and Vermilion counties and announced it would be overseeing five centers, 300 seats for children and families and 75 staff members in those areas. 

One year later, only four centers are operational. 

Enrollment sits at 78 children this November, roughly one-quarter of the planned capacity. Thirty-three staff positions remain vacant, 29 of them in Danville, according to Planning Commission Early Childhood Division Director Brandi Granse. 

“We’re trying to figure out some other options to build up our numbers and ensure that we are reducing our waitlist and providing the services that the community needs,” Granse said in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess. 

Granse said the gap in enrollment is not driven by lack of need, but rather by a shortage of qualified early childhood teachers. She said the commission intends to do outreach to local community colleges to recruit teachers.

The commission has operated Head Start services in Champaign County for decades and currently serves more than 500 children and pregnant women across four centers in Urbana, Champaign and Rantoul.

Services range from preschool instruction, health screenings and family support services for newborns up to age five. According to the Illinois Head Start Association, Head Start programs serve more than 26,000 families in Illinois through 51 grantees, which include agencies like the commission.

Lauri Morrision-Frichtl, executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, said the takeover by the regional planning commission in 2024 was not a traditional “expansion” but instead a handoff of a preexisting service area. 

“I wouldn’t call it expansion because there are not any additional children and families served. They’re just replacing another Head Start program that was serving Ford, Iroquois and Vermilion counties and picking up serving their children and families,” Morrison-Frichtl said in an interview. 

The acquisition of the grant and programs by the commission followed years of instability in Head Start services for the three counties. The Community Development Institute (CDI), a national interim provider, managed the program after the previous grantee lost its federal grant due to multiple deficiencies. 

Granse said that usually when programs lose their grants, the institute will step in to run them for around a year, but it served the three counties for five years. That extended period left the area’s Head Start network underenrolled and short-staffed until the Champaign commission got the grant. 

“When CDI came in, they were an outsider … they didn’t provide all the services that they were supposed to provide,” Morrison-Frichtl said. “So they lost that trust across the communities in the Ford, Iroquois, Vermilion counties. And so now, Champaign’s trying to rebuild all of that.”

According to the regional planning commission’s 2024-2025 annual report draft, provided by the commission, services at the newly-acquired centers began only in March and April 2025. The Danville-Kimball location remains closed pending licensing approval. 

The draft shows all four operating sites, Paxton, Gilman, Watseka and Danville-Voorhees, have pending quality-rating applications with ExceleRate Illinois, a statewide program that aims to promote quality improvement in early childhood education and evaluate licensed care providers. ExceleRate is one of the programs offered by the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (INCCRRA).

Some teacher recruitment efforts unsuccessful, commission says

On Sept. 26, 2025, the commission approved a change-of-scope request to reduce the number of funded Head Start slots by 117 in Vermilion County and close the underenrolled Danville-Voorhees center at the end of the year. 

The rent rose around 43% at the Voorhees center from $99,000 to $142,500 a year and staff shortages made the program “unsustainable,” Granse said. The 46 children enrolled at this site will be moved over to the nearby Danville-Kimball center, a rent-free federal interest building, in the new year.

The planning commission said this change would not result in any staff layoffs, as staffing shortages persist. 

The commission had been trying to recruit qualified teachers across the Indiana border, but had not been successful. 

To maintain these services, the September meeting discussed new partnerships in the works with the Vermilion County Housing Authority, Roselawn Center in Danville and the Danville Area Community College’s Child Development Center. 

Granse said she expects the Kimball center to be operational by Jan. 1 and the Voorhees center to close at the end of December, which aligns with winter break, causing minimal student disruption. 

Morrison-Frichtl said the commission’s situation mirrors broader statewide and national challenges.

 “Expansion can only happen if Congress allocates money,” she said. “Last year we were flat funded, so there wasn’t a whole lot of expansion.”

Across Illinois, Head Start programs continue to struggle with staffing, transportation and facility costs. Morrison-Frichtl said federal funding has not kept pace with inflation or wage competition from public school districts, which often pay preschool teachers significantly more.

Granse said teacher shortages are especially prevalent in rural areas.

“There aren’t very many students in the early childhood program (at Danville Area Community College),” she said. “We have the same issue over here at Parkland and at one time at the University of Illinois. That’s been growing since COVID.”

Head Start also suffers from federal uncertainty. Since early 2025, the Trump administration has imposed funding freezes, staff cuts and other policy changes that have left many Head Start grantees worried about the future.  

In July 2025, the Trump administration moved to bar undocumented children and those from mixed-status families from Head Start eligibility, a proposal that Illinois and other states challenged in court.

 “It was something that we were all very worried about,” Granse said. 

These federal shifts have added to uncertainty for local providers like Champaign’s commission, which rely on government funding to keep classrooms open.

The regional planning commission had its federal program systems review in October 2025 and received “good” feedback, but is still awaiting final results.

Granse said she hopes that the licensing progress in Danville and new college partnerships will strengthen the program’s staffing and enrollment heading into 2026. 

Morrison-Frichtl said rebuilding trust and a stable workforce will take time, but she has confidence in the commission because of its success with programming in Champaign County.