Comments close on HHS plan to let states set Head Start class sizes and to cut the administrative cost cap to 5%
The proposed rule would replace the Head Start Program Performance Standards with a shorter set, drop federal ratios and service hours, and lower the cap on administrative costs from 15% to 5%. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein asked HHS to keep the federal standards.
Washington. The public comment period closed Oct. 6 on a proposal by the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the Head Start Program Performance Standards and replace them with a much shorter set of rules. Nearly 40,100 comments were filed, K-12 Dive reported. The proposal was published Aug. 7; HHS has set no date for a final rule.
The Administration for Children and Families says the proposal would rescind more than 1,400 regulatory provisions while everything the Head Start Act requires stays in force.
What would change
Programs would no longer follow federal limits on group size and staff-to-child ratios. Each would set and post its own limits, consistent with state and local licensing law, and could keep stricter ones. The agency says the current Head Start ratios are stricter than every state's in three of four categories.
Required hours for center-based preschool would end, leaving the floor in the statute and the 1994 rules: at least three hours a day and 128 or 160 class days a year. All education would be in English, except in Tribal programs.
The cap on costs to develop and administer a program would fall from 15% to 5% of total approved program cost. The agency says 3.7% of grants now operate at or below 5%, and that about 95% of grant recipients are nonprofits, have less than $9.5 million in Head Start funding, or both. It puts the rule's effect at about $2.2 billion a year once fully in place in 2031, mostly in program spending that it says grant recipients could shift to more enrollment slots.
Objections from a governor
In an Oct. 5 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Assistant Secretary Alex Adams, Gov. Josh Stein of North Carolina asked HHS to keep the federal ratios and group sizes, service hours and the 15% cap. He argued that the Head Start Act sets a 15% ceiling and allows a lower limit only for a program whose costs are found excessive. He supported removing rules that merely repeat the statute.
His office said the programs serve more than 17,600 North Carolina children.
“Flexibility should help programs respond to local conditions; it should not result in larger classes, fewer qualified staff, shorter program days, diminished health and family supports, or widely different levels of service based solely on where a child lives.”
The National Head Start Association, which supports reducing unnecessary burdens, said the rule goes too far, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children asked HHS to withdraw it, K-12 Dive reported.
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