As the school year gets underway, Oakland’s Head Start programs are preparing to face more threats to the stability of the program serving low-income families.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration floated defunding the 60-year-old program . Around the same time, upheaval within Oakland’s Human Services department — including two key Head Start staffer being placed on indefinite leave — left the program in a lurch. And a budget memo from Oakland’s then-interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins suggested that the city would consider offloading Head Start to another agency to save money. This convergence led families and advocates to begin a campaign to protect the program.

More recently, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services issued a directive barring undocumented immigrants fro

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