Attorney General Mayes Opposes Gutting of Head Start Standards

PHOENIX – Attorney General Kris Mayes today joined a multistate coalition in submitting a comment letter opposing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) proposal to dramatically cut regulations governing the Head Start program. Head Start is an early childhood education program designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing young children from low-income backgrounds with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and educational needs. The proposed rule would gut long-standing and evidence-backed Head Start Program Performance Standards, impose an English-only mandate, and revise the cap on allowable administrative and development costs from 15% to 5%, while adding other burdensome requirements that would undermine children's ability to learn and be prepared to succeed in school.

"Head Start has helped Arizona kids start school ready to learn for decades, and this proposal would tear down the very protections that make that possible," said Attorney General Mayes. "Cutting safety standards, staffing ratios, and health screenings while banning instruction in a child's home language does nothing to help children and families."

Head Start has operated with bipartisan support for over 60 years, and helps address the national childcare gap, estimated at 28.2% of children with potential need who cannot access care within a reasonable distance. Head Start is critical for children who are frequently turned away from or otherwise cannot access quality early education, such as children with disabilities, children experiencing homelessness, migrant children, children learning English, and children from low-income households.

The proposed rule would eliminate over 1,400 regulations designed to protect enrolled children, pregnant individuals, and families, threatening to upend a nationwide system of care. Specifically, the proposed rule would eliminate requirements for early support and coordination of services for children with disabilities, maximum child-to-staff ratios, safety standards and safe transportation practices, parent committees, staff credentialing and training requirements, and research-based timelines for health, developmental, and vision screenings. It would also remove minimum hours of service, the prohibition on expulsions, limits on suspensions, and end the ability of families to self-attest in eligibility determinations.

In their place, HHS proposes to ban non-English instruction and cut allowable administrative costs from 15% to just 5%. The proposal would grant HHS broad discretion to reject program budgets even for critical services that were previously required. Taken together, new regulations would remove or reduce requirements for education, health, and mental health services, which are core promises of the program.

HHS describes the proposed rule as returning discretion to the states and allowing programs to respond to local conditions. In reality, the proposed rule would create state-by-state disparities in early childhood education and care and significantly increase workload and costs for state agencies. As HHS itself acknowledges, the rule would also mean larger class sizes, fewer teachers, coaches, and home visitors, shorter program days, and reduced health, dental, and mental health services, leading to poorer educational outcomes for children and added strain on the states' public health and welfare systems. The proposed cap on administrative costs could make it harder for programs to apply for, become, and remain Head Start providers, further limiting services for children in Arizona. Several provisions also vest undefined discretion in HHS, leaving Arizona Head Start programs exposed to political targeting by this federal administration.

Joining Attorney General Mayes in the letter, which was co-led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the Governor of Kentucky.

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