Butler County Children’s Center has closed one of its Head Start sites and has cut employees and hours at the eight remaining sites following deep federal funding cuts.

“It impacted us tremendously,” said Alice Nunes, CEO of the Butler Country Children’s Center, the organization that oversees the federal program that helps prepare children up to age 5 for school. “We really just had to look at the program and see where we could cut without reducing services to families.”

Last school year, county Head Start programs had a $575,000 budget. Now, with $170,000 less, officials decided to close the Moraine Elementary School Head Start location and to lay off several workers from other sites.

Closing Moraine will cut 20 children from the program.

Nunes said the Moraine closure was based on the site not meeting full enrollment and on having the highest rent cost.

Head Start employees who are left are doing more with less.

“Our family service workers used to have a caseload of 50 families. And now their caseload is between 60 and 70 because we eliminated one family service worker,” Nunes said.

Site assistants and a program manager also were eliminated.

Last year, there were 370 county children in Head Start and 130 in early Head Start.

This year’s program will start at the end of September.

Nationwide, about 57,000 children will be denied a place in Head Start and Early Head Start because of federal budget cuts under the sequestration program.

New estimates about the automatic budget cuts were released Monday by the federal government. The cuts have slashed more than $400 million from the federal program’s $8 billion budget.

Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, said sequestration represented the largest hit to Head Start funding in terms of dollars since the program began in 1965.

“The cut has been very painful throughout the country,” Vinci said. Nationwide, about 1,600 agencies receive federal Head Start funding.

According to the latest figures, slots for 51,000 preschoolers were eliminated along with child care slots for 6,000 babies. Children will lose 1.3 million days of service at Head Start centers and more than 18,000 employees will be laid off or see their pay reduced.

Head Start provides preschool services to 3- to 5-year-olds from low-income households and offers their families education, health, nutrition and social services. Early Head Start supports the families of infants and pregnant women.

Eagle staff writer Kate Malongowski contributed to this report.