The Administration for Children and Families is overhauling a federal low-income childcare program to include less regulation and lower administrative costs, while increasing the number of spots available.
The notice of proposed rulemaking, titled “Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs,” slashes the 130-page regulations governing the Head Start program to just 10 pages. The administration says the changes to the program will reduce costs and save $2.2 billion.
Created in 1965, the program serves low-income families by providing early education and health programs for pregnant women, infants, toddlers, and preschool children.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s uncle, Sargent Shriver, founded Head Start, but Kennedy feels the program has diverged from its intended purpose.
“It was not just about taking kids and, you know, teaching them. It was about whole family education,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Signal. “It was always a holistic approach, and some of the regulations during the Biden administration put more emphasis on paperwork than parental involvement, and we are returning to the original purpose and design of the program, where the parents locally are involved in making decisions about their children’s education in Head Start.”
The Administration for Children and Families, which operates within the Department of Health and Human Services, proposed rescinding and replacing the current Head Start Program Performance Standards to reduce “bureaucratic burden”; defer to state policies when possible; return local control to Head Start agencies; reduce unnecessary duplication of Head Start regulations; and emphasize the role of health, nutrition, and exercise for kids.
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The public will have 60 days to submit comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking.
To promote the change, Kennedy and Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families Alex Adams are rolling out the new rule and touring a Head Start classroom in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday.
Under the Biden administration, burdensome regulations caused Head Start to experience the largest reduction in slots in the history of the program, Kennedy said.
“Head Start is supposed to be about childcare, not about paperwork,” he said. “During the Biden administration, we lost over 100,000 slots because of the very burdensome paperwork requirements that were put on the facilities, and we’re ending that. This is about childcare. It’s about family and childcare, and not about filling out forms.”
The new rule maintains federal oversight of disbursement of program funds and upholds all statutory requirements of the Head Start Act.
It also unlocks more funding to be used directly for children and families, a move that is projected to allow about a quarter-million new Head Start slots nationwide. It will decrease the amount of funds used on administrative expenses.
“It’s projected to save about $2.2 billion, which allows us to repay that $2.2 billion in the program,” Adams told the Daily Signal, “which would allow us to create up to 236,000 new head start slots and reverse the trend that we’ve seen from the previous administration.”
The rule adds new requirements focusing on the health of children in the program. Daycare centers will be required to provide healthy, nutrient-dense foods, collaborate with parents on healthy eating, and offer physical education support services.
“What Head Start is trying to achieve is to set these children and these families up for success,” Adams said, “and one of the things that we think will lead to long-term success is a commitment to health, nutrition, and physical activity.”
For every three and a half hours that a child is at a Head Start facility, 30 minutes of that time must be physical activity.
Implementing the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, agenda at Head Start is “very gratifying,” Kennedy said.
Meals for kids will be prepared in an “interactive and collaborative way.”
Kennedy said this is “one of the big objectives of MAHA, to start bringing people together.”
“The atomization and fragmentation and this sort of epidemic of isolation that we have by bringing people together around cooking every day—sort of re-implementing the sacred ritual of having family meals every day, and that’s something that we talk about quite a lot,” he said, “and that we’re putting a lot of resources into this with the real food program and everything else.”
The new rule would require programs, with the exception of tribal programs, to promote English language learning by conducting all education in English.
The rule also eliminates regulations and provisions that restate statutory requirements and gives parent committees the flexibility to operate with prescriptive federal rules. Programs will be able to address behavioral issues and discipline within the context of state and local licensing requirements and laws.
“We’re trusting the local communities, the local providers, and the local parents to structure their programs in a way that fulfill the statutory obligations, and they’ll be held accountable for the outcomes that they achieve,” Adams said. “Some of the messaging we’ve heard is there’s some that think these programs can’t be trusted to make those decisions and that if they make those decisions they’ll cut corners. That’s not been my experience.”
“The folks that run these programs are just phenomenal leaders who are in it for the right reasons,” he added, “and we trust that they’ll make the right decisions and we will monitor their outcomes in accordance with the statutory provisions.”
The New York Times reported that the expected rule change would “seek to strip away standards on health, literacy—and brushing teeth” for “poor children.”
Kennedy discounted the attack as “ill-informed.”
“It’s part of the gestalt where the Times and the Nation and other outlets feel an obligation that anything that comes out of the administration has to be demonized and vilified,” he said.
But Kennedy thinks the rule change is “hard to complain about this.”
“The main innovation is it reduces the administrative costs from 15% to 5% and that creates all of these new slots over 200,000 new slots for children,” he said. “All of the standards for caring for children, none of those are affected.”
The Times story pointed out that one of the regulations slashed in the new rule required children to brush their teeth after meals.
“The Head Start program has to comply with state and federal laws in terms of the standard of care for the kids,” Kennedy said, “and it’s not going to reduce the amount of teeth brushing going on at these Head Start programs.”
Adams said critics are missing that “just because we’re no longer copying and pasting statute into rule doesn’t mean that we’re taking the foot off the gas on any of the core framework or comprehensive services, or parent engagement.”
“My overall message is we want to increase access,” he said. “We want to trust and empower local communities to make the decisions that are needed to meet the unique needs of their population, and we want more kids to be able to access Head Start by making some fairly commonsense reforms.”
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