Trump administration plan to roll back Head Start regulations could impact over 350 Georgia centers

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to roll back regulations on a key early education program for low-income families, the agency announced Thursday. 

The program, known as Head Start, provides early childhood education, nutritious meals, health screenings and other services to more than 23,000 children and their families across Georgia, according to the Georgia Head Start Association. 

Trump administration threatens to gut Head Start rules

Over 1,400 rules could be rescinded under the new proposal, ending some of the policies that have made the program unique. The impact could be felt across Georgia’s 350 Head Start centers.

The existing Head Start program, which is funded largely through federal tax dollars, maintains strict standards on metrics like student-to-teacher ratios, facility safety standards and disability access. The program was launched in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. 

In a press release, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy argued that streamlining or eliminating some of those regulations would save roughly $2.2 billion in funding that could be used to expand access to the program.

“We are removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands more children,” Kennedy said. “That’s how we renew the promise of Head Start for the next generation.”

Among the potential changes are a proposal to relax student-to-teacher ratio requirements, allow programs to suspend or expel students due to behavioral issues and impose a requirement that nearly all programming be conducted in English.

Education advocates like Kristin Bernhard, the CEO of the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, said they are still combing through the 200 pages of rule changes outlined in the proposal to get a sense of how the changes could impact participating children and their families. 

Part of the reason the program is so effective, she said, is that Head Start centers are required to maintain low teacher-to-student ratios, provide evidence-based curriculum and extend support services to parents as well as children. According to Bernhard, the program also plays an outsized role in rural parts of the state, where over a quarter of childcare slots are provided through the Head Start program.

Though Bernhard said she supported the goal of getting more children enrolled in Head Start, she cautioned against altering the program’s regulations in a way that could erode its status as the “gold standard” for early childhood education.

“Reducing paperwork can be a great thing, but we don’t want to reduce actual accountability towards achieving high quality services for this population of children,” Bernhard said. 

The proposed rules are now open for a mandatory 60-day public comment period.