By Shira Small
Since its founding in 1965, Head Start has helped low-income families gain access to early childhood education and social services. Its reach has expanded with the Founding of Early Head Start in 1994which expanded access to education, nutrition services, prenatal health resources, social and mental health services, and more to families with children under three and pregnant women. Over 40 million children and their families have benefited from Head Start’s resources since its inception, and in 2023 alone, the program served 778,420 children and pregnant women. Head Start has a significant impact on the children and families who can access it.and its continued improvement will be critical to helping families find and pay for care.
To improve the program and support the workforce, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published a new final rule that increases wages for Head Start staffis improving its mental health supports and expanding services to better meet the needs of children and families across the country.
CLASP supports these changes and has actively provided feedback on the proposed rules., Public comments made earlier this year. Our comments focused on ways to center equity and improve implementation without overburdening providers and families at a critical moment for the child care sector. They focused primarily on CLASP areas of expertise such as mental health, suspension and exclusion, data equity, accessibility, and benefits. The final rule was in response to our feedback and the broader feedback from the Head Start community. Some key improvements identified in the public comments include:
Increase in remuneration and social benefits for the workforce.
The final rule strengthens teacher salaries and benefits, which the Office of Head Start (OHS) estimates will increase Head Start teacher salaries by $10,000. New benefits include paid leave for full-time employees, access to low-cost or free behavioral health services, and health insurance for all employees, including part-time employees. The final rule also includes a provision that gives the Secretary the ability to issue a pay equity waiver in 2028 if investments to implement the provision are insufficient. This is in response to concerns about the significant costs of these provisions and the need for additional investments to implement them.
Modernizing Head Start’s engagement with families through data equity.
The new final rule includes enhanced data equity practices that are consistent with CLASP’s recommendations to focus on community engagement and responsible data collection. It requires that data collection be community-informed and intentionally targeted to identify community strengths, needs, and resources. The community engagement practices in the final rule ensure that programs meet the needs of all prospective and enrolled families, including those with diverse schedules, disabilities, language skills, family structures or generational differences, literacy skills, and cultural backgrounds.
Implement fair and well-documented suspension and expulsion practices.
Head Start has long been a leader in implementing positive policies that have significantly reduced disparate treatment and suspension and exclusion of children in Head Start programs. The final rule outlines the definition of suspension for these programs, emphasizes its temporary purpose, and more clearly sets out how programs must support children’s expeditious return to regular care and classrooms.
Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children, families and providers.
The final rule better integrates mental health supports into all aspects of the Head Start program and strengthens the role of mental health counselors. This includes clarifying program wellness expectations and requiring programs to better integrate mental health into the services they provide to families.
We welcome the positive improvements made by HHS in the new final rule and are pleased that many of our comments were incorporated into the final rule. These changes will greatly support the Head Start workforce, children, and families if the sector is adequately funded to implement these new policies. We look forward to working with OHS and Head Start programs to implement these new requirements as equitably as possible while advocating for the necessary resources to fully fund these improvements and the child care and early education system in general.
>> Read more about CLASP’s work at Head Start.