Proposed Head Start Changes Could Cut Jobs, Raise Family Costs, Analysis Shows

A little over a month after the Trump administration debuted its proposal to dramatically reduce Head Start standards, a clearer picture is emerging of what those changes might mean for the 1,600 local programs across the country and the families they serve.

Nationwide, nearly 40,000 Head Start jobs could be cut, affecting the program’s teachers, home visitors, child development specialists, family service workers and many other positions, according to an analysis from Together for Head Start, a coalition of national, state and local organizations that formed in 2025 to protect and strengthen Head Start amid growing threats from the Trump administration. 

The analysis draws from projections made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in its proposed rule, “Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs,” which was published on Aug. 7 and is now in a 60-day public comment period, set to end on Oct. 6.

Other impacts, the analysis found, include a 6% to 9% pay cut among some staff, including directors, fiscal officers and staff who oversee health services, as well as stagnant wages for teachers, even as they are expected to care for up to 32% more children. 

The proposed rule would also reduce healthcare services for children and families by up to $167 million annually, which could result in many families seeking out medical, dental and mental healthcare elsewhere, with some having to travel to access that care or, in some cases, going without it altogether.

To come up with these numbers, Together for Head Start analyzed projections detailed in the proposed rule change, which included a regulatory impact analysis evaluating the potential costs, benefits and outcomes of the regulation if it were to be implemented. 

The proposed rule would give individual programs more discretion, but it’s hard to predict the precise impact, since some programs may make more changes to their operations than others. For that reason, HHS offers three scenario-based models for each regulation change over a five-year horizon: a low, primary and high estimate based on how many programs take advantage of the change. Together for Head Start used the high estimate scenario throughout its analysis. The group also used data from Child Care Aware of America about the price and affordability of childcare to draw some conclusions. 

The administration mentions the word “flexibility” 160 times in its proposed rule, suggesting that fewer regulations and performance standards will give Head Start operators greater freedom in how they run their programs. Leaders at HHS are also quick to tout the $2.2 billion in annual savings they estimate would follow these changes by 2031. (The Head Start program is currently funded at about $12.4 billion annually.)

Staff involved in the leadership and operations of Head Start programs, however, have a much more bleak interpretation of the proposed overhaul. 

“It’s not a $2.2 billion savings. It’s a $2.2 billion cut in workforce and services,” said Rhett Cecil, executive director of the Indiana Head Start Association, which is part of the Together for Head Start coalition.

In the analysis from Together for Head Start, which includes state-by-state impacts, Indiana is projected to lose nearly 600 jobs. That amounts to about 15% of the state’s Head Start workforce, Cecil said. The analysis also estimates that Indiana would face a $2.6 million decline in funding for healthcare services under the rule, and that each family accessing Head Start services could face an average annual increase of $622 in childcare costs per child. 

These changes, Cecil said, would “handcuff” families, particularly in rural areas. Half of Indiana’s Head Start programs operate in rural areas, he said, where Head Start is often the only provider of health screenings, disability screenings and mental health services for young children. 

“If we take that away,” he asked, “what does that do to half our state?”

Cecil is in favor of a comprehensive review of the Head Start performance standards, he said. He believes there is room for improvement. 

“But you can’t do that without looking at the six decades of research and data that have been built around Head Start, then going out into the field and talking to seasoned leaders and practitioners in classrooms,” he said. “They’ll really tell us where changes could get made.”

The changes being proposed now, he said, seem to have come from people sitting in an “ivory tower somewhere in Washington, D.C.,” without the involvement or consultation of people on the ground. 

Kara McFalls, executive director of the Pennsylvania Head Start Association, doesn’t buy the narrative the administration has put forward either. 

“It’s false flexibility,” she said. “It will only increase stress and burden dramatically.”

Together for Head Start estimated that Pennsylvania would lose more than 1,300 jobs and almost $6 million in funding for health services, and that each family would face an average annual increase of $635 in childcare costs per child. The latter estimate comes from an HHS scenario in which children receive 99 fewer hours of Head Start annually — a cost-saving mechanism for the government, but one that would place the burden on families to find alternative care arrangements for their children while they work.

That additional financial strain on families with children in Head Start — who are, by definition, living in poverty — would be enormous, McFalls said. To be eligible for Head Start, a family of four must earn less than $33,000 per year, which equals 100% of the federal poverty level. For a family of two, such as a single parent and a child, it’s around $22,000. 

“It would be devastating for them,” McFalls said of the projected $635 increase in annual childcare costs. “That could be their ability to stay in their housing. … That could be the difference of food on their table, food for all the people in their family for months. That could be the difference in their ability to fix their car to be able to go to work.”

That’s to say nothing of the nearly 8% of children currently enrolled in Head Start who could lose access to the program altogether because their eligibility is based on family self-attestation. (The HHS proposal would eliminate self-attestation as a way to satisfy eligibility requirements.) Many of these families are experiencing housing instability or homelessness and cannot provide the documentation needed to prove eligibility, said Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, senior vice president of government relations and federal policy at Start Early, a nonprofit advocacy organization that launched Together for Head Start and provided support for the recent analysis. 

“This whole [proposed rule],” she said, “is reducing access — and reducing equitable access — to families we know could use Head Start, deserve Head Start and for whom Head Start could actually make a huge difference in their lives.” 

Sanchez Fuentes is not alone in worrying about what will happen to the Head Start workforce once teachers are asked to care for increasing numbers of children. The proposed rule change would remove Head Start’s notably low adult-to-child ratio requirements and ask that programs defer to state licensing guidelines. 

Currently, only two states align with Head Start ratio standards for 2-year-olds, and five states align with ratios for 3-year-olds, according to a report from the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University. That means a Head Start teacher working with 3-year-olds in the 45 other states could see their classroom size balloon. Rather than two teachers caring for 16 children, as is currently required in Head Start classrooms, that same pair of educators could end up serving up to 30 children in some states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

“That is not education,” said Cecil. “That is simply crowd control.”

Increased class sizes, on top of reductions in support staff and essential services, could eventually lead qualified staff to leave Head Start, said Sanchez Fuentes.

“It’s only going to compound the pressure on people who are there every day,” she said. 

When Sanchez Fuentes thinks about the legacy of Head Start over its past 60 years as a federal antipoverty program, she sees it as a leader in the field of early care and education, “at the forefront of innovation,” using science and data to inform its programming. Head Start expanded to serve infants and toddlers under Early Head Start in the 1990s, when “nobody was paying attention to babies,” she said, offering an example. 

“To suddenly be at this point where 90% of those things are going to go away? It’s heartbreaking,” Sanchez Fuentes said, referring to the fact that the administration is proposing Head Start standards be reduced from 133 pages to about a dozen. 

“We will no longer have this foundational piece of quality that’s good for kids,” she added. “What does that say about how we care about our kids?”