Sequestration means cuts to Head Start programs in Lehigh Valley, northwest New Jersey

Across Pennsylvania, 1,540 seats will be cut, including 60 in Lehigh and Northampton counties.

Head Start programs across the country are going to have to start cutting seats and turning away eligible children due to federal budget cuts.

The sequester went into effect March 1, ushering in federal spending cuts of about $85 billion in 2013. The cuts are set to continue for a decade.

It means Head Start early education programs across the nation are seeing a 5.27 percent cut in their federal funding this year. It's been left up to program administrators to decide how to implement the cuts.

"We think this is devastating," said Joan Benso, president and CEO of Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children. "The real challenge is that children don't get to redo their preschool years when the economy recovers."

Pennsylvania Head Start programs are set to lose $13.5 million in 2013. It means providers will likely have to eliminate services for 1,540 children, including 60 in Northampton and Lehigh counties, according to the Pennsylvania Head Start Association.

In New Jersey, the White House estimates 1,300 New Jersey children will miss out on Head Start.

Head Start is a program for low-income children from birth to age 5 that provides children with developmentally appropriate education with the aim of getting them caught up to their peers. Early Head Start provides services to families and children under the age of 3.

"We will pay over the next decade in remediation costs to help them catch up," Benso said of the children who won't be enrolled. "It is really an example of penny-wise and pound-foolish public policy."

Community Services for Children, which runs all of the Lehigh and Northampton counties' Head Start programs, is losing $447,664 and that will result in a 7.7 percent drop in the number of kids served, said Sara George, the organization's vice president for development.

"We're already not able to serve all the children who are eligible for Head Start and Early Head Start," George said.

NORWESCAP, which provides services to 498 kids in Warren, Hunterdon, Sussex and Morris counties, is set to lose $287,965, said Lois Henseler, director of Head Start and Early Head Start for NORWESCAP.

She declined to provide specifics on how many seats would be lost since staff and families have not yet been notified.

"We are going to need to reduce a fair amount of staff and enrollment in order to meet that," Henseler said.

A Head Start program in Newark could cut a classroom and still serve many children in a central location, she said. But NORWESCAP's nine sites stretch across four counties and that's expensive, Henseler said.

"We have pockets of poverty so we need to be in those areas," she said.

About 6,500 children are eligible for Head Start in Lehigh and Northampton counties. Only 1,142 of those children will be enrolled next fall when Community Services has to close three classrooms, likely in Allentown, George said. It will mean 60 fewer Head Start slots and 20 fewer Early Head Start slots, she said.

"And the gap just gets bigger and bigger for those who are otherwise eligible," George said.

Health insurance and other operating costs, which are constantly rising, are also of concern to providers.

"In another year from now, it could mean another 20 children that have to be cut because we can't make ends meet," George said.

Investing in early childhood education now is much cheaper than dealing with the costs down the road, Benso said.

The cuts mean kindergarten teachers across the nation will see more students who don't know the alphabet or how to share or problem solve, George said. Head Start children have heard only one-third of the words that their average middle-class peers have heard spoken, she said.

"Kindergarten teachers are going to have their work cut out for them," George said.

The average income of the families served is $12,000 to $13,000 a year and most are working parents, George said.

"They are children who are coming from severe poverty," she said. "Life is very difficult for these children. We're just making life more difficult for them."

But providers remain committed to offering children high quality early education and making careful cuts.

"It has been a painful and difficult process but the children and families and our staff are utmost in our considerations," Henseler said. "We regret having to make any of these changes but we're left without an option."