The Trump administration moved Thursday to start overhauling the Head Start program, which provides free early-childhood education and parent-support services to low-income children.
Health and Human Services officials say the proposed changes are meant to encourage more local decision-making, telling reporters on a call that “one-size-fits-all mandates cannot fully account for the realities facing” the 1,600 providers across the country.
The proposed rule would limit how much Head Start centers can spend on administrative overhead, cut federal regulations and shift control over standards like student-teacher ratios and background checks from the federal government to the states. Though the program falls under HHS, the cuts also reflect the White House’s recent moves to shrink education funding and regulations while ceding more autonomy to the states.
“Federal mandates can certainly hinder local decision-making, drive up costs and limit the program’s reach,” Alex Adams, an assistant secretary at HHS, said on the call Wednesday. “If we get this proposed rule right, we will grow the number of Head Start slots.”
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Head Start enrolls nearly 716,000 children, from birth to age 5, from low-income families. Since the program’s inception under President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, it has served more than 40 million children and their families.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, whose uncle Sargent Shriver founded the program, spoke positively of the proposed changes on a preview call Wednesday.
“It’s a program that works for the most vulnerable of the poorest kids in our society, and it’s really important we protect it,” Kennedy said.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), who sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, slammed the deregulation effort.
“President Trump has all but declared war on Head Start and affordable child care in America,” Murray, a former teacher, said in a Thursday statement. “After Congress and the nation forcefully rejected Trump’s efforts to destroy Head Start, this administration now wants to quietly gut Head Start by eliminating the basic health and safety standards our kids rely on — well, I refuse to stay silent about this travesty.”
The proposal has a 60-day public comment period. Murray encouraged parents and teachers to speak out against the Trump administration’s proposed erasure of regulations for the program.
“This rule is not final,” Murray said in her statement. “I will press administration officials when they come before Congress, I will sound the alarm as loudly as possible, I will carry this fight in every negotiation I walk into — and I will keep at it until we protect Head Start.”
The new proposal would toss out nearly all of the program’s regulations — which mandate research-backed curriculum and services like medical and dental screenings — forcing Head Start operators to rely on the typically more lenient state or local child care licensing requirements.
“This proposed rule would eliminate Head Start’s high standards, potentially putting the early learning, health, and safety of our youngest children at risk, and placing the future of the entire program in jeopardy,” Whitney Pesek, senior director of federal child care policy at the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement.
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