ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A delegation of Orange County leaders will fly up to Washington Monday to meet with congressmen to lock in funding for the Head Start program.
Head Start serves 40,000 young children and expecting mothers throughout Florida with resources, diapers and no-cost education.
1,500 of those children are in Orange County, with heavier concentrations in the Taft, Apopka and Millenia neighborhoods.
The Trump administration has floated the idea of cutting Head Start as it seeks ways to pay for an extension of the tax cuts passed during the president’s first term.
It has backed off that idea as of late because of intense backlash, but Commissioner Mike Scott said he wasn’t taking any chances.
“When I think about my experience as a kid, a lot of the things I was able to do was based on the foundation that was laid by other people who didn’t even know me,” Scott, a Head Start kid himself and one of the delegation members, said.
One of Scott’s lobbying tools will be data that shows Head Start generates $7 for the local economy for every dollar invested since people are able to work while their kids are being cared for, and the kids who come from the program have better career prospects.
He’ll also be fighting for programs that are still on the chopping block, such as money Orange County uses to help people who lose their jobs temporarily pay their bills.
He called the prospect of losing the funding “scary.”
“There are families behind these dollars, and they count on them, and they’re not counting on them because they’re a part of this party or that party,” he said. “They’re counting on them because it allows them to be able to work and do things and contribute to our community.”
He also mentioned the dozens of staff members who oversee the programs and worried about where they’d be shifted to within the county if their departments disappeared.
Scott said the county was slow walking its budget process since neither Congress nor Tallahassee have successfully passed their own budgets.
“It really is just kind of trying to read the tea leaves,” he said. “Just modeling contingencies. What does it look like if we lose all our funding? What can we do? What does it look like if we lose 50% or 25%?”
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
©2025 Cox Media Group
