Missouri has cut funding for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to $2 million from $6 million this year, and the state will stop accepting new applicants for the free book program beginning July 1.
The change lands on a program that was reaching 169,032 Missouri children under 6 at the end of March, or about 42% of that age group. Those children will keep receiving a free book each month as long as money holds out, but families trying to enroll after July 1 will be shut out.
Imagination Library was founded by Parton and made Missouri the first state to fully fund it. The program’s reach has become one of the clearest signs of how far the state has leaned on it: a monthly book in the hands of more than four in 10 young children, often through local partnerships that helped keep the effort moving statewide.
The budget decision comes as state leaders continue to describe early childhood and children’s literacy as priorities, even as they made different choices elsewhere in the spending plan. The Missouri Scholars Program got a $10 million increase, and the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Fund was given $60 million in general revenue.
Rep. Aaron Crossley said the program was crowded out in a year when lawmakers were also wrestling with other proposed cuts. He said that “any other year, this would have been kind of a political volleyball that was tossed around and put in the news, but because there were just so many other cuts being proposed, I think this one unfortunately got lost.”
Rep. Patti Mansur said the final budget did not match the rhetoric heard when the session opened. She said that “when the speeches are made in January, what everyone is told is that early childhood and children’s literacy are the highest priority, but when you look at the funding situation at the end of the session, it does not match what is stated at the start.” She also questioned why the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Fund, originally built as a charitable tax credit program for donors supporting private-school scholarships, now has a dedicated $60 million of general revenue.
The cut also arrives as Missouri heads toward a budget squeeze after spending more than it takes in, with federal pandemic aid nearly gone since 2023. That backdrop helps explain why advocates for people with developmental disabilities and domestic violence survivors spent much of the year fighting off other reductions, but it also underlines how quickly a small change in one line of the budget can alter access to a statewide program that has become part of the state’s early-literacy infrastructure.
The immediate next step is simple: new applications stop on July 1. The harder question is how long the state can keep mailing books to the 169,032 children already enrolled if the funding line keeps shrinking.
