COLUMBIA — Six years ago, there was no data center in South Carolina taking advantage of sales tax exemptions the state offers on the vast number of computers, servers, hardware and software purchased for these windowless facilities that power everything from artificial intelligence to high-speed financial trades.

Nor did any data center receive a reprieve from taxes on their monthly energy bills. It’s a benefit that could add up quickly, given the largest of these centers, known as “hyperscalers,” can consume upwards of 200 megawatts.

By last year, it was a very different story.

For seven companies, those sales tax breaks provided by state law tallied an estimated $828 million for the fiscal year that ended last June, according to data from the state’s fiscal analysts.

The whopping number was revealed during this week’s Senate budget debate, as Sen. Chip Campsen unsuccessfully sought a one-year suspension. He argued that giant corporations are getting benefits not provided to South Carolina residents, who senators referred to as “Fred and Ethel” — names for a couple borrowed from the 1950s TV show “I Love Lucy.”

“They don’t get any exemption, yet we’re giving it to the wealthiest (companies) in the history of the world,” the Isle of Palms Republican said.

“Fred and Ethel could use that money a lot better,” Campsen added.

Data center tax breaks are on the chopping block in some states

Data center controversy spreads

South Carolinians have long been exempted from paying sales taxes on their home electricity. Legislators extended that exemption to “technology intensive” facilities in 2006.

Six years later, they passed a law specifically exempting qualifying data centers from sales taxes on all electricity, as well as computers, related equipment and software used by the facility.

But no company claimed those breaks until the 2021-22 fiscal year, when they totaled less than $8 million. In four years, that escalated to $828 million, according to the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office. It didn’t break down how much is attributable to the electricity exemption versus computer purchases.

To qualify for the breaks, a data center owner must invest at least $50 million over a five-year period and employ at least 25 full-time workers.

The company also must pay wages worth 150% of the per capita income in the county where it is located.

In Berkeley County, home to tech giant Google’s inaugural data center in the state, that amounts to an annual salary of $87,600.

In Aiken County, where Meta is building, it’s more than $85,000.

And in Colleton County, where a proposed gigawatt data center has since stalled, it’s about $74,000.

Unable to get agreement on a one-year hiatus of the sales tax breaks, Campsen managed to get a reporting requirement inserted in the state budget. Under the approved clause, the Department of Revenue must report the total worth of the tax breaks to the Legislature’s chief budget writers in the House and Senate.

South Carolina is among 14 states not disclosing revenue lost to data center tax breaks, according to a report released earlier this month by Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that focuses on economic development incentives.

“This is an industry that has descended upon the entire country,” Campsen said. “We are playing catchup. We are behind the eight ball. And this isn’t just South Carolina. Every state is struggling with this.”

Data center development has become mired in controversy in town halls across the country, even as President Donald Trump deemed them “key” to beating out adversaries, such as China, in the artificial intelligence race.

As public sentiment has turned against these energy-gobbling centers heading into the midterm elections, the president has pushed companies to sign a voluntary pledge to cover the cost of building out the power they require.

According to the research firm Data Center Watch, local opposition held up or blocked at least $156 billion worth of investment across 48 projects in the second half of 2025.

In South Carolina, residents of Spartanburg and Colleton counties have battled back two such data center proposals.

SC legislators denounce Lowcountry data center while mulling regulations for the industry

‘Pulling the rug out’

Still, Sen. Sean Bennett balked at the prospect of yanking sales tax incentives for one, specific industry, adding that it wasn’t fair to companies with centers under construction in the state or considering a location here.

“We’re pulling the rug out from underneath them,” the Summerville Republican argued.

“There is no reason to subsidize a multitrillion-dollar company with sales tax exemptions,” Campsen responded.

“In the 11th hour, we’re changing the rules,” Bennett shot back.

“It’s the only hour I have left,” Campsen volleyed, as legislation aimed at regulating these centers has stalled in Senate committees with just nine days left on the legislative calendar.

Sen. Michael Johnson also chimed in that ending the tax breaks could impact not just the developers of data centers but other industry that has its own private computing facilities.

“Lockheed Martin is going to be affected by this. Comcast, Charter, Blue Cross Blue Shield. All of these companies are saying, ‘We will be directly impacted by this,’” the Tega Cay Republican said.

“These are major employers in our state,” Johnson added. “We’re changing the business rules on existing companies. Businesses just want predictability.”

Beyond the impact to the companies, Sen. JD Chaplin pointed to the property tax revenue these centers bring to South Carolina’s rural corners.

Meta invests in SC solar as utilities expect more clean energy-conscious firms to finance projects

“It’s the people from the wealthier parts of the state that seem to be against data centers, while it’s the much poorer regions of the state that stand to benefit the most from them,” the Darlington Republican said.

“If we had $828 million to spend, we’d be spending a lot of that in the rural areas,” Campsen responded. “You’d get a lot more bang for your buck than giving a sales tax exemption to a data center.”

Other issues

Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Boiling Springs, pointed to the recently defeated Spartanburg County data center proposal, saying it would have generated between $60 million and $70 million in annual property taxes, even after the county offered the company a discount on its rates.

Now activists have turned their attention against a different $2.8 billion data center in the Upstate county — this one already approved for an incentive package that allows it to buy down its tax bill to a maximum of $2 million annually for each year of the 40-year deal.

Unlike other data centers in the state, this company, Valara, pledged to generate its own electricity. But to do so, it now wants to add 11 natural gas turbines, capable of generating about 400 megawatts total, to its previously permitted fleet of 24 natural gas-powered generators — a ninefold increase in power capacity.

State environmental regulators still need to review the company’s application before deciding whether to grant its latest request.

‘Cutting-edge’ supercomputing facility, a $2.8B investment, planned for Spartanburg County

Sen. Shane Martin, R-Pauline, unsuccessfully attempted to add a rule to the state budget to prevent what he called a “bait-and-switch” tactic.

While the Valara and sales tax repeal efforts failed, the Senate did add requirements to the budget that data centers using more than 3 million gallons of water a month report usage to the state’s environmental regulators or face a $10,000 per day penalty.

The Senate also barred data centers from other state level economic development incentives, though the state Commerce Department has largely steered clear of data center recruitment.

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This story was published in partnership with Counterstream Media. 

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ATLANTA — When he drives through his neighborhood now, Brian Page passes rows of police cars and AI‑powered cameras that track nearly every movement.

For most of his life, Page, who goes by “Scapegoat Jones,” felt safest in the community that Atlanta officials have since flooded with officers and surveillance technology in the name of “public safety.” He bought a house six minutes from the one he grew up in in DeKalb County, is raising his daughter in the same majority‑Black neighborhood, and cherished the forest trail where his family used to jog and ride bikes. 

Now, a massive police training complex and an expanding web of surveillance rise in its place, and it makes him feel watched, not protected.

The network, he said, “certainly feels like an invasion of privacy.”

The 41-year-old’s unease about the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, more commonly known as “Cop City,” is at the center of a much larger experiment. 

Built atop 85 acres of one of Atlanta’s last urban forests, the training center is now wired into what has become the most expansive surveillance network of any city in the U.S., part of more than 60,000 public and private cameras linked to law enforcement across the metro area. 

For Black residents like Page, whose neighborhood deals with flooding, sewage problems, and extreme heat, the complex replaced a rare cooling green space with shooting ranges, mock city blocks, and a round‑the‑clock surveillance hub, deepening climate and health risks for nearby residents. At the same time, opponents warn that wiring the site into Atlanta’s vast camera and license-plate network will supercharge a pattern of digital tracking in Black neighborhoods.

“I hope that [the training center and surveillance system] doesn’t change the vibe of the people in that area,” Page said.

But, he has a feeling that it might. “Just knowing the history of this country [and] the history of profiling. I do have concerns and questions about how this AI [is being used],” he said. “I don’t trust them to have the information or collect it. I can’t understand the purpose of it.”

As Georgia-based surveillance companies market this model nationwide — and as other cities begin to revolt over its ties to immigration enforcement and protest policing — the debate in Atlanta is becoming increasingly important. 

Training materials and tours of the site emphasize its mock city blocks wired with cameras, license‑plate readers, and real‑time crime‑center feeds, giving officers a controlled environment to practice using AI‑driven tools to track movement, monitor protests, and coordinate responses. 

A 2025 mapping project estimated that Atlanta now has about 124 surveillance cameras for every 1,000 residents, which is higher than any city in the world outside of a handful in China. In recent years, the network has used artificial intelligence to flag “suspicious” vehicles and people movements in real time, even when no suspected crime has been committed. 

Civil liberties groups warn that what gets rehearsed on those soundstages does not stay there. Atlanta police have already used social media monitoring and networked cameras against Cop City opponents, and researchers fear the facility will export that model to departments across the country.

The city of Atlanta did not respond to requests for comment from Capital B and Counterstream Media. 

Residents said this model leaves them questioning whose futures are being sacrificed when the city is willing to trade environmental protection and privacy for artificial intelligence.

“The surveillance system, the environmental issues, and the gentrification of Atlanta go hand in hand,” said Atlanta community organizer Kamau Franklin. “The focus and money poured into specialized police units and cameras feels far outstripped by anything invested in housing, green space, or jobs.”

A city under constant watch

In the past two decades, Atlanta quietly built itself into what local researchers now call a “city of cameras.” The network started modestly, with fewer than 20 cameras feeding into a fledgling Real‑Time Crime Center downtown. It has since metastasized through the city’s Connect Atlanta program, which lets businesses and homeowners donate live access to their private feeds so the footage appears alongside Atlanta Police Department cameras on officers’ screens.​

Flock Safety, a Georgia‑based company whose black‑and‑white plate readers sprout from utility poles and subdivision entrances, sells police an interface that allows officers to search the city and far beyond for vehicles by plate number, make and model — and, in new AI pilots, by open‑ended descriptions like “truck with a certain bumper sticker,”​​ according to Shruti Lakshmanan, a policy advocate at the ACLU of Georgia.

“Mass surveillance in general is the issue, but AI is almost supercharging what mass surveillance can do,” said Lakshmanan, who has spent the last year poring over APD contracts and data logs. “Before AI, surveillance footage was used to investigate situations where there was already suspicion of wrongdoing. What AI allows police departments to do is to generate suspicion.”​

Their group’s records requests revealed that APD recently tested Flock add‑ons that let officers search across images and video using plain language — for example, pulling up every car with a specific political message on its bumper. Lakshmanan said the civil liberties group is concerned that AI may be used “to target people based on their beliefs.”​​

Flock Safety did not provide answers to questions submitted by Capital B and Counterstream Media. 

For Franklin, the experiment in the historic Black city is unwelcomed, but not surprising. “It fits well with the trajectory of gentrification in Atlanta,” he said. 

A growing body of research supports that assertion. A 10‑city Harvard University study found that surveillance cameras are most densely clustered in gentrifying, ‘diversifying’ neighborhoods, with installations increasing as white residents move in even after controlling for crime and income.

Atlanta has seen the nation’s fourth-most Black neighborhoods gentrified since 1980.

Then as property values rise, so does more intensive policing. One national analysis found that for every 5% increase in property values, neighborhoods saw a jump in arrests. Together, those trends suggest that as Black neighborhoods like Page’s become targets for redevelopment, the influx of capital often arrives wrapped in new surveillance and enforcement.

From a beloved woodland to a barren data mine

For Page, the transformation started long before the cameras and cables went live. It started when the trees came down.

Growing up, he remembers that the South River Forest was something they had to drive past on the way to somewhere else. As an adult, DeKalb County finally paved and manicured a safe trail there, and it changed everything for the better.

“We had really grown fond of just spending time on that trail, riding bikes, walking, jogging,”​ he said.

When the Cop City plans became public, city leaders insisted that the complex would include a replacement walking path that the public could access. 

But as construction ramped up, things changed, Page said. By the end of 2021 a group of activists within the Stop Cop City Movement known as “Forest Defenders” began to occupy Intrenchment Creek Park, living in tents and tree houses. The park however remained open to the public until March 2023 when it was closed by DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, who cited recent and ongoing criminal activity in the area.

Earlier that year, on Jan. 18, a Georgia State Patrol officer shot and killed a 26-year-old Forest Defender named Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Terán.

Page hasn’t walked the trail since.

Environmental advocates warn that the consequences of losing that tree canopy will not be abstract. Research on Atlanta’s tree canopy has found that when forest cover is replaced with pavement and rooftops, stormwater runoff from a typical heavy rain can increase by 20%, overwhelming aging pipes and creeks that already flood Black and working‑class neighborhoods more often. The training center, they argue, is a concrete expression of that tradeoff: sacrificing shade and water‑absorbing soil on the city’s Black edge to cement a new era of policing technology.​​

“Atlanta is known as a Black Mecca, a place of upward mobility, but it’s also a poster child for income inequality and environmental racism,” said Darryl Haddock, an environmental scientist with the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance. 

Atlanta still markets itself as a “city in a forest,” but researchers estimate the metro area has been losing roughly half an acre of tree cover every day for more than a decade, with removals now outpacing replanting. 

“If we keep investing without considering the needs of lower‑income Atlantans, it’ll be easy to imagine — and then see — an Atlanta where entire communities are erased.”

As Atlanta’s AI camera grid grows, it increasingly depends on the same energy‑hungry data infrastructure that is transforming the South’s forests and fields into server farms, known as data centers, to hold and process the information collected via cameras. Those facilities demand vast amounts of electricity and water, adding strain to the metro area and rising energy costs. That means the loss of canopy around Cop City is a part of an ecosystem of industrial sites elsewhere, as communities across the country trade trees and water for the computing power. Across metro Atlanta, residents have organized against data center developments. 

Capital B and Counterstream Media asked APD to explain whether and how it relies on dedicated or third‑party data centers to process surveillance data, in addition to other questions related to transparency, but the agency declined to comment.

No end to how data can be misused

The risks of that technology extend far beyond a few square miles of southeast Atlanta.

Every time a car passes one of the cameras, its license plate, location, and timestamp become part of a searchable, shareable database that now reaches nearly 2,000 law‑enforcement agencies around the country.

In November, the Atlanta Community Press Collective reported that Atlanta police officers were using the camera system to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, even as APD has said it does not assist in immigration enforcement.

There are many ways for federal agencies to access the data. Federal task‑force officers embedded in local departments can log in directly, or ask a partner department in another state to run searches on their behalf, advocates said.​​

“Once that data is collected, it often spreads beyond its original purpose,” Lakshmanan said. “Without strong safeguards, it can be shared with federal agencies or other jurisdictions without public knowledge or consent and misused to target protesters, immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ people, people seeking reproductive care. There’s kind of no end to how it can be misused once the city loses control.”​

Page didn’t know all of those details when he first started seeing more patrol cars idling along familiar blocks. What he knew was the feeling.

“I just can’t see the need for the surveillance,” he said. “The whole ‘police state,’‘big brother is watching’ concept is not something that makes me comfortable.”

He worries most about what it might mean for his neighbors, especially young Black men who already “always ironically fit the description of the suspect.” He hasn’t had to explain Cop City to his daughter yet, but he knows that conversation is coming.

“As a father, what direction are we headed in?” he said. 

Mapping by Georgia State University researcher Taylor Shelton shows Atlanta’s camera network is densest in the city’s predominantly Black west and south side neighborhoods. National studies of facial recognition have found that many algorithms are between 10 and 100 times more likely to misidentify Black and East Asian faces than white faces, with error rates for darker‑skinned women reaching as high as 35%.

Across the country, more than two dozen cities — from San Francisco to Nashville, Tennessee, and St. Louis — have passed “Community Control Over Police Surveillance” ordinances that require public hearings, impact reports, and city council votes before police acquire or expand surveillance technology. Advocates in Atlanta are now pushing for the city to become the first in the South to adopt similar rules.​

“Transparency should be built into the way the city obtains and uses surveillance tech,” Lakshmanan said.“Atlanta is so influential that the standard we’re able to set here, we hope, is replicated throughout other major cities in the South.”

Holding on to old Atlanta 

Long before Atlanta’s suburbs reached into DeKalb, the forest that now surrounds the training center was known as Weelaunee for the yellow‑brown water that runs through its creeks and wetlands. After Muscogee people were forced west along the Trail of Tears, the same ground was worked by enslaved people before becoming the Atlanta Prison Farm. As these examples evidence, the modern policing at work in this site stems from a much older pattern of disciplining Indigenous and Black communities.

Page said he still feels that history and the connection to the land when he pulls off the highway and onto the streets he knows by heart. 

“I love that area,” he said. “That area has made me who I am. I love the people of DeKalb County, especially that southern part.”​

Gentrification, Page said, was already changing that landscape before the first Cop City renderings appeared. “I’m open to different types of faces in the community,” he said. “I just hope that we can keep the core of what that community was.”​

He wonders what it will mean for young people to grow up in a neighborhood where a police training facility sits where the forest used to be, and where cameras and license‑plate readers log every trip home.​

“Even if you don’t have anything to hide, it doesn’t mean that you want to be watched,” he said.

The post Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Makes a Black Neighborhood a Testing Lab for AI Policing appeared first on Capital B News.

When you step into a roadless area of a national forest, the difference is immediate. The air is cooler, the woods quieter, the water clearer. You hear the splash of a mountain stream or the rustle of leaves in the breeze. These are some of the most intact places in our national forests—rare sanctuaries where roads have not carved up landscapes, where adventure and clean water still thrive. 

Roadless areas are rare, especially in the eastern U.S., and they are now under threat. The Trump administration has proposed dismantling the Roadless Area Conservation Rule—better known as the Roadless Rule—one of America’s most important bipartisan conservation achievements. It safeguards 45 million acres of national forests. For the South, the loss would be devastating. 

The Forest Service finally listened to the American people and agreed it’s common sense to stop crisscrossing remote areas with roads and logging.

Sarah Francisco, Virginia Office Director

A rule born out of crisis 

The Roadless Rule was born from necessity. Starting after World War II through the late 1990s, the U.S. Forest Service sliced up our national forests with logging roads, liquidated stands of old-growth, and degraded watersheds with roads it couldn’t afford to maintain. Facing public backlash, the Forest Service relented and temporarily halted new roads in roadless areas in 1998. Three years later, with encouragement from SELC and many others, the agency officially adopted the Roadless Rule.  

As Sarah Francisco, Director of SELC’s Virginia office, explained: 

“With the Roadless Rule, the Forest Service finally listened to the American people and agreed it’s common sense to stop crisscrossing remote areas with roads and logging. The rule drew a simple line: Don’t build new roads and launch new logging projects in our remaining roadless areas. What the rule really did was protect the status quo—preserving access for hunting, fishing, mountain biking, and backpacking while preventing further damage.” 

That stance has kept some of the South’s most cherished landscapes intact for decades. 

A call to protect what we cannot replace 

For Sam Evans, head of SELC’s National Forests and Parks Program, the fight is not just about policy—it’s also personal.  

“The first places I visited in the national forests as a teenager were roadless areas,” Evans recalled. “I fell in love with these lands because they were so different from the beaten-up pine plantations where I grew up—almost magical. I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to understand and protect that magic. For most national forest users, their favorite spots—the quiet hikes, scenic vistas, crystal clear trout streams—include roadless areas, even if they don’t realize it.” 

So why dismantle a rule that has worked for nearly a quarter century? The proposal is more about lining the pockets of logging and mining companies than it is about serving the public. But particularly in the South, where steep terrain and fragile watersheds make responsible logging difficult, the costs far outweigh any gains. 

What’s at stake 

Undoing the Roadless Rule would unleash irreparable harm far beyond habitats lost. 

Roadless areas are where people’s favorite stories are set—where families enjoy nature, anglers fish for native brook trout, and mountain bikers test themselves on rugged terrain. Even if visitors don’t know the term “roadless area,” they know the feeling: the unique quiet of a forest without traffic or the chance glimpse of a bear. These experiences fuel a thriving recreation economy in places like western North Carolina and northern Georgia. 

Roadbuilding is the single biggest threat to water quality in national forests. Roads fast track dirt into mountain streams, fouling drinking water supplies, and block fish and other aquatic wildlife. The Roadless Rule has curbed this, ensuring safe drinking water for millions of Americans. 

The Forest Service already manages more miles of roads than the U.S. Department of Transportation and faces a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog. New roads make no sense when the agency can’t afford the ones it has.  

“The closer you look, the worse the math gets,” Evans explained. “This proposal makes no sense for communities, no sense for taxpayers, no sense for the Forest Service itself. The only benefit would be to the very few industry players who want to sell our heritage for a quick buck.” 

The road ahead 

The Roadless Rule has been under attack before. Each time, public support kept the rule intact, and SELC played a key role in ensuring Southerners’ voices are heard. Tapping into local ties across the South brings a broad, diverse coalition together to protect these beloved places. This widespread outcry was effective in establishing the rule, and in fending off the challenges to it since then.  

“This rule is the product of care,” Francisco says. “Care that people across this region have for their forests, their water, their wildlife, and their communities. And that care hasn’t gone away.” 

These protections matter today, and for generations to come. They safeguard drinking water for millions, support local economies, protect vital habitat, and preserve landscapes that define who we are as a nation.  

As Evans puts it: “We have complete confidence that people from this region will not stand for this. When they understand what’s at stake, they will tell the Forest Service: No, not on our watch. These places matter too much.” 

map

Losing roadless areas

View Resource

The Save Our Sign Archive went live today. The full text of the launch announcement follows below.

The Save Our Signs project (SOS), a community-driven effort to preserve National Park Service (NPS) interpretive materials before they are removed from public view, is proud to announce the launch of the Save Our Signs Archive, a collection of photographs taken by visitors at National Parks. This open access “people’s archive” is a curated collection of over 10,000 photos of National Park Service interpretive signs that have been submitted to Save Our Signs by members of the public.

Save Our Signs was formed as a result of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which seeks to erase “negative” stories from any federally-managed properties, and the subsequent Secretary of the Interior Order 3431, which called for the removal any materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Save Our Signs hopes to preserve our nation’s rich history by documenting the signs and exhibits used to educate visitors in the National Parks, the nation’s largest outdoor classroom.

“I’m so excited to share this collaborative photo collection with the public. As librarians, our goal is to preserve the knowledge and stories told in these signs. We want to put the signs back in the people’s hands,” said Jenny McBurney, Government Publications Librarian at the University of Minnesota and one of the co-founders of the Save Our Signs project. “We are so grateful for all the people who have contributed their time and energy to this project. The outpouring of support has been so heartening. We hope the launch of this archive is a way for people to see all their work come together.”

The SOS Archive includes an online collection of the crowdsourced photos organized by NPS site, and a spreadsheet that houses volunteer-provided details for each individual photo submission. In addition to the name of the park, this includes the date that the photo was taken, and may include the title of the sign, if it was submitted by the volunteer. Since this information came from volunteers all over the country, the Save Our Signs team is not able to independently verify dates and locations. Please see the SOS FAQs page on the Save Our Signs website for more information about the photos included in the collection.

All photos included in the SOS Archive have been released to the public domain, and the Save Our Signs team welcomes anyone to download and use them as they wish.

“We’re inspired by the people who have sent us photos and told us how much the National Parks mean to them,” said Dr. Kirsten Delegard, Project Director of Mapping Prejudice, and one of the co-founders of the Save Our Signs project. “This effort to shine a spotlight on historical erasure is just beginning. We need people to continue to collect more photos and tell other Americans what materials have already been removed from the National Parks.”

“We also encourage people to use their expertise to engage with this collection,” added Molly Blake, Social Sciences Librarian at the University of Minnesota and another co-founder of Save Our Signs. “We invite researchers, journalists, artists, and members of the general public to use these photographs to build visualizations and analyze the content of these signs that, collectively, tell stories about our nation’s past that belong to all of us.”

While the initial crowdsourcing effort was originally given an end date of September 17, 2025, with increasing reports of NPS interpretive signs that have been flagged for removal or removed altogether, SOS will continue to accept photo submissions at saveoursigns.org for the foreseeable future. Any photos received after September 24 will be released at a later date. See the Project Updates page for more information.

About Save Our Signs

Save Our Signs is a community collaboration co-founded by a group of librarians, public
historians, and data experts in partnership with the Data Rescue Project and Safeguarding Research & Culture. Project leadership includes:

• Dr. Kirsten Delegard, Project Director, Mapping Prejudice, University of Minnesota
• Jenny McBurney, Government Publications Librarian, University of Minnesota
• Molly Blake, Social Sciences Librarian, University of Minnesota
• Dr. Lynda Kellam, Data Rescue Project Steering Committee
• Lena Bohman, Data Rescue Project Steering Committee

Direct to Save Our Signs (SOS) Archive

Direct to Save Our Signs Project Website (SOS)

Direct to SOS FAQs

The case could give educators much-needed guidance on free speech protections and how that speech might be limited when social media comments disrupt educational environments, experts say.

The first words I uttered after successfully defending my dissertation were, “Wow, what a ride. From Head Start to Ph.D.!” Saying them reminded me where it all began: sitting cross-legged with a picture book at the Westside Head Start Center, just a few blocks from my childhood home in Jackson, Mississippi. 

I don’t remember every detail from those early years, but I remember the feeling: I was happy at Head Start. I remember the books, the music, the joy. That five-minute bus ride from our house to the Westside Center turned out to be the shortest distance between potential and achievement. 

And my story is not unique. Every year, hundreds of thousands of children — kids whose names we may never know, though our futures depend on them — walk through Head Start’s doors. Like me, they find structure, literacy, curiosity and belonging.  

For many families, Head Start is the first place outside the home where a child’s potential is nurtured and celebrated. Yet, this program that builds futures and strengthens families is now under threat, and it’s imperative that we protect it. 

Years later, while training for high school cross-country meets, I’d run past the park next to the center and pause, flooded with memories. Head Start laid the foundation for everything that followed. It gave me structure, sparked my curiosity and built my early literacy skills. It even fed my short-lived obsession with chocolate milk.  

More than that, Head Start made me feel seen and valued. 

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

There’s a clear, unbroken line between the early lessons I learned at Head Start and the doctoral dissertation I defended decades later. Head Start didn’t just teach me my ABCs — it taught me that learning could be joyful, that I was capable and that I belonged in a classroom.  

That belief carried me through elementary school, Yale and George Washington University and to a Ph.D. in public policy and public administration. Now, as part of my research at the Urban Institute, I’m working to expand access to high-quality early learning, because I know firsthand what a difference it makes.  

Research backs up what my story shows: Investments in Head Start and high-quality early childhood education change lives by improving health and educational achievement in later years, and benefit the economy. Yet today there is growing skepticism about the value of Head Start, reflecting an ongoing reluctance to give early childhood education the respect it deserves.  

If Head Start funding is cut, thousands of children — especially from communities like mine in Jackson, where families worked hard but opportunities were limited — could lose access to a program that helps level the playing field. These are the children of young parents and single parents, of working families who may not have many other options but still dare to dream big for their kids.  

And that is why I am worried. Funding for Head Start has been under threat. Although President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget would maintain Head Start funding at its current $12.3 billion, Project 2025, the influential conservative policy document, calls for eliminating the program. The administration recently announced that Head Start would no longer enroll undocumented children, which a group of Democratic attorneys general say will force some programs to close.  

Related: Head Start is in turmoil 

I feel compelled to speak out because, for our family, Head Start wasn’t just a preschool — it was the beginning of everything. For me, it meant a future I never could have imagined. For my mother, Head Start meant peace of mind — knowing her son was in a nurturing, educational environment during the critical developmental years. My mother, Nicole, brought character, heart and an unwavering belief in my potential — and Head Start helped carry that forward. 

My mother was just 18 when she enrolled me in Head Start. “A young mother with big dreams and limited resources,” she recounted to me recently, adding that she had “showed up to an open house with a baby in my arms and hope in my heart.” 

Soon afterward, Mrs. Helen Robinson, who was in charge of the Head Start in Jackson, entered our lives. She visited our home regularly, bringing books, activities and reassurance. A little yellow school bus picked me up each morning. 

Head Start didn’t just support me, though. It also supported my mother and gave her tips and confidence. She took me to the library regularly and made sure I was always surrounded by books and learning materials that would challenge and inspire me. 

It helped my mother and countless others like her gain insight into child development, early learning and what it means to advocate for their children’s future.  

Twenty-five years after those early mornings when I climbed onto the Head Start bus, we both still think about how different our lives might have been without that opportunity. Head Start stood beside us, and that support changed our lives. 

As we debate national priorities, we must ask ourselves: Can we afford to dismantle a program that builds futures, strengthens families and delivers proven returns? 

My family provides living proof of Head Start’s power.  

This isn’t just our story. It is the story of millions of others and could be the story of millions more if we choose to protect and invest in what works. 

Travis Reginal holds a doctorate in public policy and public administration and is a graduate of the Head Start program, Yale University and George Washington University. He is a former Urban Institute researcher. 

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org. 

This story about the Head Start funding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

The post OPINION: Head Start ‘changed our lives’: A newly minted Ph.D. reflects on why this program must be saved  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.