Officials overseeing Head Start programs in the area insist that families should not hesitate to sign up their children for the preschool initiative, despite the Trump administration’s stated plans to try to overhaul it.
Marianne Bouthilette, Community Action Pioneer Valley’s interim director of Head Start and early learning programs, said the public has a chance to fight back against the proposal to remove as much as 80% of its regulations, such as standards ensuring low staff-to-student ratios or requirements to provide services to preschoolers’ families.
“What I really want to say is, this is a proposed rule — not a final decision. And this proposal is open for discussion for 60 days,” she said in a phone interview on Friday. “It’s an important opportunity for people to share their experiences.”
The 60-day public comment period started Aug. 7, and Americans can visit tinyurl.com/PublicCommentHeadStart to submit one.
“We get to have a say before it goes [into effect],” Bouthilette said.
Michelle Haimowitz, the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s executive director, echoed Bouthilette’s sentiment.
“Nothing changes today; nothing changes tomorrow; nothing changes in the near-term,” she said. “We are working to defeat this proposal.”
The proposed overhaul of Head Start aims to eliminate roughly 1,400 federal regulations, shifting oversight to state and local licensing standards. Proponents estimate $2.2 billion in savings, but critics warn it could strip comprehensive poverty-alleviation and health services from 700,000 of the country’s most vulnerable children.
Bouthilette said Massachusetts has 28 Head Start programs, serving at least 10,000 children from birth to age 5. She said Community Action Pioneer Valley’s Head Start and Early Learning Program is funded for 311 slots and employs about 150 staffers. In Franklin and Hampshire counties, services are provided at two sites in Turners Falls and single-site locations in Orange, Amherst, Northampton, Ware and Easthampton.
“Head Start is the gold standard of early education and care, and removing these standards puts our most vulnerable children at risk,” Bouthilette said, “as it could increase the number of children in a classroom [and] remove requirements for screening children for developmental delays, disabilities, and mental health and health concerns.”
Steven Barnett, founder and senior director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, advises that low child-staff ratios are linked to better school readiness.
“The most comprehensive research reveals that success depends on individualized teaching 1:1 and in small groups,” Barnett said in a statement Thursday. “That is why our institute recommends no more than 1:10 as a staff-child ratio among 10 research-based preschool quality standards, and why Head Start and most state-funded pre-K programs mandate lower child-staff ratios than childcare licensing standards.”
Barnett also voiced concern about the reduction in required hours to just three hours per day for 128 days a year and a new requirement for English-only instruction, arguing that fewer hours make it more difficult to individualize instruction.
Bouthilette also noted that the changes would “impose administrative cost caps on local programs that would force programs to cut staff.”
“Nationally, this new rule would result in pressure to provide lower quality to more children,” she continued.
Sargent Shriver, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s uncle, played a vital role in launching Head Start in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”
“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,” The Associated Press quotes Kennedy as saying.
Haimowitz said Project 2025, the 922-page policy blueprint and transition plan authored by The Heritage Foundation, explicitly targets Head Start and proposes its elimination.
“I’m not one to try to get into the heads of this administration, but I think the administration has been saying for two years that their goal is to eliminate and reduce funding for Head Start,” Haimowitz said.
The federal program operates in all 50 states and has long had support from both Democrats and Republicans, according to the AP. Bouthilette said it employs about 250,000 people and includes at least 1,600 grant recipients.
