Families wary of a Head Start rollback that could leave more kids behind

While hundreds of thousands of people rely on the U.S. government’s Head Start program for low-income children, major cut proposals by the Trump administration have families worried about what it could mean for their kids. Even as there has been some bipartisan pushback to the slashes, aspects of children’s lives from school to home to doctor’s offices could be affected.

Why is the government slashing Head Start?

The plan for the funding cuts is overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which runs Head Start. The goal of the cuts is “removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands more children,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement.

The proposed cuts would constitute nearly a complete retooling of Head Start, which was launched in 1965 as the nation’s primary child antipoverty program, providing education, health and nutritional assistance. The agency’s changes would “remove most of Head Start’s 133 pages of federal requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings and home visits,” said The New York Times. Even a “requirement that children brush their teeth after meals would end.”

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What effect will this have?

Many are concerned that the cuts would have a disastrous impact on the 1,600 Head Start providers who fight childhood poverty. Head Start “ensures children receive healthcare, developmental screenings, nutritious meals, disability services, highly qualified teachers and strong partnerships with families,” Joel Ryan, the director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said to the Times. HHS’ proposal “would weaken those protections for hundreds of thousands of children.”

Part of the plan involves reducing the cap on federal money that can go to Head Start’s administrative costs from 15% to 5%. Trump administration officials hope this will “free up funding to serve as many as 268,000 more children,” said The Washington Post. It would also give states a “wide leeway to craft the program to their liking.” But some are concerned that stripping away Head Start’s nationwide criteria and shrinking the cap would have a largely negative effect.

“It wouldn’t be Head Start anymore,” Jen Bailey, who operates several Head Start programs in Madison, Wisconsin, said to the Post. Head Start could become a “shell of a program” without national standards, Bailey added. Even some Republicans appear worried. “Just walking away and turning a blind eye toward it, I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said to USA Today. The program helps “a lot, a lot, a lot of kids.” And “a lot of times we can make it better, but there are ways we can make it worse too,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) told the outlet.

“At first glance, these proposed changes might not seem so terrible, but as you dig deeper into it, what we will find is that there really are a lot of changes that will impact what is the heart of Head Start,” Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, the senior vice president at nonprofit Start Early, told The 19th. The current standards aren’t only the federal regulations. They “really are the foundation for how we ensure that programs across the country are supporting children, families and communities in the way that they want best.”