Leaders at a Bloomington-based early childhood program for low-income families say they’ve stabilized the agency and begun rebuilding its reputation in the community after a tumultuous few years. Now they’re waiting to find out if their big federal grant will be renewed by the Trump administration.
Heartland Head Start serves around 190 children and families in McLean and Livingston counties. It’s faced numerous leadership challenges, workplace-culture complaints, and compliance issues in recent years, including a power struggle between its two governing boards that devolved into a lawsuit.
Things have stabilized under the leadership of interim executive director Chuck Hartseil, who started in fall 2023. There’s also new leadership on Heartland Head Start’s governance board.
“I think we’re off to a good start,” said Nancy Ann Elder, who’s been president of the governance board for about six months. “We’ve had our fair share of problems, but we have good people in place. We’ve got good staff, good leadership. And my favorite word is to think positive. We’re going in a positive direction.”
Head Start is a federal program, impacted by the same uncertainty that’s hit other parts of the federal government since Donald Trump was inaugurated.
“The federal government is making it a bit more interesting for us at this point,” Hartseil said. “That’s added to the challenge that we’re working through. But I think we’re on a good trajectory.”
Heartland Head Start’s funding has not been impacted thus far, though three other Head Start agencies around Illinois were not able to access their funding as of last week and were on the verge of closing.
After Trump took office, the Bloomington-based Heartland Head Start has had to revisit its approach to immigration status for its employees and is now developing a policy for what to do if federal immigration authorities show up at one of its facilities. They’ve also had to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] in their materials and activities, despite literally being a program focused on equity. A staff training on DEI got canceled at the regional level.
Funding future
Heartland Head Start’s $4 million budget is funded almost entirely by a federal grant, awarded every five years. The current grant ends in June 2025.
Hartseil said they’ve submitted a grant renewal application and are now waiting to hear back. Because the agency received two deficient findings in the same year, that means the grant becomes a competitive – allowing other agencies to apply for the money too. Hartseil said he’s not aware of any other agencies doing so.
They expect to hear back before June 30 whether they’re getting the grant again, though the Trump administration’s moves on grant funding have created some uncertainty.
“The language in the directive is as confusing as the other language surrounding those executive orders,” Hartseil said.
When Hartseil was first hired, he said hiring and retaining staff would be among his top priorities. Hartseil and Elder said they’ve made some good progress there, especially on staff retention. They did a wage-comparability study that led to pay increases for teachers, with raises possible for additional staff once they have more certainty about funding, Hartseil said. Morale has improved, he said.
New hiring remains a challenge.
“We’re still running into challenges in finding people who can meet the qualifications of Head Start and DCFS,” Hartseil said. “We have to meet the most rigorous standard that exists for any of our activities.”
They’re two or three positions away from being fully staffed for teachers. That’s allowed them to reopen another classroom in January that can serve 17 kids in the morning and another 17 in the afternoon. Overall enrollment (around 190 families) is about 85-90% of where Hartseil wants it to be.
For Elder and the five-member governance board, another important task is hiring a new permanent executive director; Hartseil is still interim. Elder said they’re in the early meetings stages and want to move quickly, but there’s no firm timeline for doing so.
As for rebuilding Heartland Head Start’s reputation, Hartseil shared an anecdote. During their grant-renewal application, they sent out 75 requests to community partners to write letters of support. Fifty of them responded and supplied one.
“We’re looking to see if we can’t get more active involvement of the community within the agency, to better assist us in meeting our non-federal [funding] match issues and helping to reinsulate the agency within the community, and helping out our families,” Hartseil.
