County committees recommend $252,274 supplemental to keep five Head Start nurses

Montgomery County committee members on GO, HHS and E&C voted unanimously to recommend that the full County Council approve a $252,274 FY26 supplemental appropriation to support five contractual school health nurses who provide mandated services to Head Start children.

Council staff said the executive transmitted the request on Nov. 4, 2025. "The county executive transmitted a supplemental appropriation request totaling $252,274 due to a grant reduction affecting the Department of Health and Human Services and their school health services," council staff said during the packet presentation. The funds would come from undesignated general fund reserves.

Council staff detailed the programmatic changes behind the request: MCPS will provide 450 Head Start seats in the current grant year, down from roughly 648 seats last year, reflecting a federal rule that limits the portion of a grant that may be delegated to a single delegate agency and a local shift to more full-day prekindergarten seats. Council staff said those changes, combined with salary annualization and benefits, explain much of the budget variance between FY25 and FY26.

Jennifer Anais, senior administrator for early childhood services, told the committees that the approved grant requires the county to serve the submitted number of children and that "we have a total of 450 children in which they're in MCPS, and we have 75 that are in the community based." Anais said the county is moving to select community-based providers for the 75 seats and aims to operate at capacity, but she warned that fear among some immigrant and minority families has depressed enrollment in some communities.

Grace Pedersen of the Office of Management and Budget said OMB evaluates supplementals by considering the certainty of the reduction, timing in the fiscal year, whether the service is legally mandated, the risk of interruption to clients and disproportionate harm to underserved communities. "We look at whether the services are required as a result of a legal mandate or if it's something that the county has been providing but it's not legally mandated," Pedersen said.

Council staff highlighted that, without the requested funding, DHHS had temporarily reallocated internal funds to maintain nurses and that service reductions could occur at nine schools and raise the risk of noncompliance with Head Start requirements. The staff memo and packet show the school-health staff breakout and list the five contractual nurses the supplemental would support.

Committee leaders said they supported the supplemental and urged the executive to develop a holistic approach to recurring federal and state grant reductions rather than repeated midyear supplementals. The chair closed the meeting by asking OMB and HHS to provide a memo explaining the county's approach for the record; committee chairs said the recommendation to full council was unanimous. "That is unanimous of the 3 committees," the chair stated.

The committees recommended the appropriation to the full Council; the full council is expected to consider the request at its next meeting.