A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Today, the Trump administration is officially publishing a proposal that would change the nation's Head Start programs. Head Start serves more than 700,000 kids from low-income families each year from birth to age 5. And the administration says it can boost that number significantly with these changes. Advocates, though, are not so sure. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo is following this. So what is in the proposal?
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, BYLINE: So a lot of it is about getting rid of federal standards that programs currently have to follow. Head Start has been around for more than 60 years. It's designed to help kids from low-income families and kids in foster care access high-quality preschool and things like nutritious meals. But it's also established a kind of national benchmark for childcare. The standards are written into a 133-page guide that advocates say helps maintain quality across states, while critics, like the Trump administration, see them as a burden. This proposal would leave rules about how many toddlers one teacher can safely handle or whether your Head Start teacher needs to pass a background check up to the discretion of states. It would also encourage more parent input about curriculum.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, the administration thinks that losing these regulations could save more than 2 billion bucks and says that money could go back into the program, but what do Head Start supporters say?
CARILLO: You know, they're a bit confused. We've been hearing for months that the government wanted to gut Head Start. So when advocates first saw the changes, many were relieved that it wasn't eliminating the program entirely like the conservative blueprint Project 2025 calls for. Instead, it's much murkier. The proposal aims to cut down on bureaucracy and reduce, for instance, the amount of money programs can spend on administrative work. The government hopes those savings would open 200,000 more spots for kids in the program. Tommy Sheridan is the deputy director at the National Head Start Association - a nonpartisan group that advocates for the program - and he says he still needs to run the numbers.
TOMMY SHERIDAN: I think we would all like to see an additional $2 billion in Head Start, frankly, even more than that.
CARILLO: Even if there are savings, it could result in a significant difference in quality between ZIP codes.
SHERIDAN: It requires a lot of discussions, a lot of thought, a lot of making sure we're thinking through what could be the unanticipated, unintended consequences and really making sure that we can respond accordingly.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So what else did you notice in the proposal?
CARILLO: So the proposal is very long. It's about 200 pages, and there are definitely some surprises. There are new guidelines about nutrition and a new mandate that says for every three and a half hours of instruction, kids have to have 30 minutes of physical activity. In a proposal focused on removing regulations, this new one came as a surprise. Another possibly more consequential line instructs Head Start centers to minimize multilingual services and redirect those resources towards, quote, "English language education and assimilation," end quote. This goes against the current model meant to bring in families, many of them multilingual, and help them access services. That potential shift concerns a lot of advocates. Of course, the final rules might look very different from what we have right now based on public comments or talks with stakeholders, or they might not. Either way, we won't know for sure for at least a few months.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Sequoia Carrillo. Thanks a lot.
CARILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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