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The Trump administration unveiled plans Thursday to overhaul the early education program Head Start for impoverished children.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) — called “Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs” — from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says it will “restore flexibility to programs to meet local needs, reduce regulatory burden and administrative costs.”
“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. That’s how we renew the promise of Head Start for the next generation,” said Kennedy in a press release accompanying the NPRM.
Head Start began in the 1960s to help fight against poverty and has received bipartisan support in Congress and presidential administrations over many years. The free, federally funded program for low-income families provides education for infants through preschoolers.
It currently serves roughly 700,000 children across the nation who are experiencing homelessness, in foster care or disabled.
The program is traditionally guided by its performance standards that outline every detail of the program including family engagement, faculty qualifications and more.
The standards were last revised in August 2024 and the NPRM, if passed in its current form, would replace the more than 120-page document with around a dozen pages of rules. The new proposed rules would leave most of the specifics in the standards to state and local law while also requiring more documentation from families to enroll in the program, according to the Associated Press.
One potential rule from the NPRM would force programs across the country to deny enrollment to a child if documentation is not provided by the family to confirm the child’s age.
The overhaul would, according to the HHS, save the federal government $2.2 billion and preserve or expand 236,000 Head Start slots nationwide.
The Trump administration had attempted to eliminate the program in its White House budget request for the 2026 fiscal year. In the preliminary phase of the proposal, the program was reportedly eliminated outright.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress that his agency will “preserve” Head Start. Congress approved a budget that gave roughly $12.4 billion to the program.
The public can comment on the NPRM for 60 days with the period elapsing on October 6.
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