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Three days after the Obama administration warned that thousands of low-income California children would be shut out of federally funded Head Start preschool programs, the California Department of Education announced today distribution of $25 million in state “restoration” funds.

The state money is intended to salvage preschool services as part of the California State Preschool Program, which has suffered budget cuts of $122 million in recent years, the department said in a press release. California child development programs overall have been cut by around $1 billion dollars over the same period, the release said.

“Everything from the economic downturn to federal sequestration has hit some of our most vulnerable families undeniably hard in recent years,” California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, said in the release. “Our hope is that these funds can begin to remove some of the obstacles working families face by opening doors to high-quality preschools that might otherwise have been shut.”