The federal government has proposed new Head Start rules that could cut staffing and decrease eligibility for the free preschool program. Durham leaders worry that the changes would exclude some of the county’s highest need children and strip away some standards of care for those enrolled.
Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for low-income families that currently serves about 500 students in Durham. Combined with Early Head Start, the two branches of the program collectively serve ages 0 through 5 and offer families food assistance, health care support, and connections to other services.
The proposed changes would limit the amount that Head Start programs can spend on administrative costs, including staff that supports family services. The changes would also shrink eligibility, reduce the required instructional time, remove procedures for developmental screening, eliminate federal staff-to-child ratios, ease required qualifications for staff, and require all instruction to be conducted in English. The Federal Register’s published proposal states these measures would help reduce costs for local Head Start programs, and the money saved could go toward more spots in classrooms for children.
The Board of County Commissioners passed a resolution September 28 opposing the proposed changes, to submit to the federal government as it accepts public comment through October 6.
At the meeting, County Commissioner Wendy Jacobs said the county needs to “be ringing the alarm” about the rule changes.
“It is really overwhelming and concerning to see what all of the impacts could be of this legislation,” Jacobs said. “It is really like a dismantling of what Head Start has become over decades and decades of trying to make the program stronger and stronger and better and better—and just literally chopping the legs off of it.”
Proposed Changes
Currently, Head Start programs are allowed to spend up to 15% of their budgets on administrative costs, and the proposed changes would bring that down to 5%. (Only 3.7% of Head Start programs operate below the 5% threshold, federal data shows.) These administrative costs go toward staff that support family services, including mental health support and developmental screenings, in addition to health, oral, and vision care.
The proposed changes also take away families’ ability to self-attest that they meet the program’s income limits or are homeless, in lieu of submitting documentation. The Federal Register’s proposal estimates this would impact the eligibility of 8% of enrolled children. While the rule change is intended to target abuse of the program, the National Head Start Association reported that there has been no evidence of such, and that families experiencing homelessness or other emergency situations are the least likely to have formal documentation on hand.
In Durham, families submit one application for all of the county’s subsidized child care programs. While Head Start is a federal program, it’s part of a collaboration with Durham PreK, which is locally funded. The county’s resolution points out that changes to required documentation for Head Start—including proof of a child’s age—would require changes to the county’s universal application, and families without documentation required by new Head Start rules may not be able to apply for any of the county’s subsidized child care.
Durham leaders also worry that removing some training requirements for teachers and degree qualifications for administrative staff—with the intent to cut down on personnel costs— will impact the program’s quality.
In an industry where staff have historically been underpaid, leading to high teacher turnover in recent years, Durham has made efforts to retain teachers by investing in higher education pathways.
But with one of the rule changes requiring all instruction to be in English, one of Durham’s investments in training bilingual teachers could be in jeopardy.
In partnership with education nonprofit Early Years, Durham Technical Community College has created a six-week early educator credential course to draw new teachers to the workforce, with instruction taught in English and Spanish. Ileana Vink, the county’s early childhood coordinator, told county commissioners at the September 28 meeting that she’s worried about the future of this program if the federal government takes away the ability to instruct children in languages besides English.
The federal office that runs Head Start wrote in the proposal that if the program transitions to English-only instruction, some teachers would require retraining while others may need to be replaced.
“This is really the opposite spirit of those types of initiatives that we’re doing in Durham,” Vink told commissioners.
Early Childhood Task Force
Other changes may not impact Durham immediately, considering there is significant local support to keep standards higher than what the federal government requires. But county leaders worry that stripping some of the program’s standards—such as reducing required instruction to only three hours per day, or removing federal staff-to-child ratios—could cause Congress to pull some of the program’s funding in the future, requiring more local investment.
The Trump administration proposed eliminating funding for Head Start in 2025, but after public pushback, the plan was tabled and baseline funding remained.
At the September 28 meeting, the county commissioners voted to create an Early Childhood Task Force that will aim to expand child care access in Durham. Stakeholders on the task force will include parents, nonprofits, local government, and employers—including a representative from the Research Triangle Foundation to explore ways to bring child care centers to workplaces.
County Commissioner Nida Allam said private investment will be important to expanding this work, considering voters this fall may choose to limit local governments’ abilities to raise property taxes, via a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
“We know it’s not going to be able to be funded solely through county taxpayer dollars, especially when we are maybe losing our ability to generate revenue through property taxes in the future,” Allam said. “So, we’re wanting to bring in partners that will buy into the value of investing in child care for the economic benefits that it brings, for the well-being of the child that it brings, the well-being of the actual care providers.”
The Federal Register is accepting public comment through October 6, and the federal department that oversees Head Start will decide which changes to push through.
The National Head Start Association anticipates a final decision will be published by the spring, and the Federal Register estimates 20% of its cost reductions in 2027, with the rest implemented by 2031.
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