In Kansas and Missouri, nearly 20,000 children receive early childhood education through the Head Start program.
Head Start, established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” provides comprehensive education and development services for children from low-income families. The federally funded program aims to ensure all children can succeed once they enter school.
Head Start leaders in Kansas and across the country say the program’s high quality relies on the strict, detailed federal standards that providers must abide by. They say those regulations provide consistency and clear expectations for services.
But most of those standards could be eliminated, if a proposal by the Trump administration goes into effect. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wants to cut more than 1,400 federal rules and replace them with a “consolidated and streamlined framework,” a move that the administration says would give more control to states and cities and could result in higher enrollment.
The changes would include the removal of Head Start-specific student-to-teacher ratios, lower the cap for administrative expenses and require English-only Head Start instruction. The goal is to save costs and “reduce the federal burden for Head Start programs.”
Kansas Head Start Association executive director Heather Schrotberger worries that the changes are too much, too fast.
“I think that there's always room for conversation about how do you reduce administrative burden,” Schrotberger told KCUR’s Up To Date. “But in my conversations with program leaders in Kansas and with those who would be impacted by these changes, such a broad, sweeping change to the regulations really threatens to create inconsistency and to reduce the clear expectations that programs are currently operating.”
Schrotberger says higher enrollment would likely rely on more children in each classroom, and would mostly save costs by reducing the Head Start workforce. She says both of which could undermine the program’s main benefit.
“Head Start is effective because children receive individualized attention in the classroom,” Schrotberger said.
The proposed rule changes were announced in early August, and people can weigh in on the public comment phase until October 6.
“It's really challenging right now because these are just, ‘Oh, this is what we're thinking,’” said Kasey Lawson, program director for MARC Head Start, which oversees programs in Jackson, Platte and Clay counties. “We're waiting to see what will happen.”
- Heather Schrotberger, executive director, Kansas Head Start Association
- Kasey Lawson, MARC Head Start program director
- Dee Spencer, owner, Delightful Learning Center
