Sen. Elizabeth Warren during a 2021 visit to a Head Start program in Taunton. (Photo via Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

IN THE SPRING of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson announced the launch of a new initiative: Head Start, a program designed to support poor children’s readiness for kindergarten by not only offering them time in classrooms but by addressing their health and well-being and partnering with their families to improve their circumstances. Our nation responded to that vision. Just a few months later, communities across our Commonwealth and across the country welcomed children into Head Start centers.

Sixty-one years later, 28 Head Start agencies across Massachusetts continue to uphold that vision – that vulnerable children deserve the highest quality early education and wraparound supports to grow and thrive. The Head Start statute and regulations codified the early vision for the program and expanded it over time to serve children from birth until kindergarten. Now, that national commitment is at risk because of a recent proposal that would dismantle Head Start’s federal standards.

In August, the Trump administration released a proposal to gut Head Start regulations and threaten the quality, scope, and services of Head Start. The proposed rule eliminates quality early learning standards; removes standards for critical wraparound services for children and families, including health and mental health services; reduces access and eligibility for children from families experiencing homelessness, children with disabilities, and foster children; and threatens learning outcomes for dual language learners.

A child cannot learn if she is hungry. A family cannot focus on school readiness if they are facing eviction. A teacher cannot meet a traumatized child’s needs if her classroom is too large, her training is inadequate, and she has no classroom supports. These facts have been the basis of Head Start’s design for 61 years, and now that design is at risk.

The federal proposal is framed as reducing federal burden and giving local programs greater flexibility. Massachusetts Head Start programs welcome meaningful flexibility. We already design services around the needs of our communities. But rather than addressing the real challenges facing Head Start — including rising operating costs, workforce shortages, and years of inadequate funding — the proposal punishes programs, families, and young children. It hands programs fewer resources and fewer protections at the same time, and it removes many of the evidence-based standards that best serve children and families.

I see the difference those standards make across Massachusetts’s 28 Head Start agencies. Together, our programs serve more than 10,000 young children and families in ways that best meet the needs of their local communities, including full-day classrooms, home visiting models, and partnerships with early learning programs and public schools.

Head Start programs enroll the most vulnerable children in their communities, who often need more than the basics that a licensed child care program provides. Head Start programs offer early education alongside health and dental care, developmental screenings, mental health support, nutrition, disability services, and family supports.

Parents are partners and leaders in their children’s education and in the governance of their programs. And because the services are so customized to those who need them, the harms of the proposal will be felt most deeply by some of the most vulnerable families in our Commonwealth.

In Massachusetts, 16 percent of Head Start children experienced homelessness during the 2024–25 program year—an 82 percent increase from just two years earlier. Yet the proposed rule would make it harder for families experiencing homelessness to access Head Start by requiring families to provide documentation proving their homelessness status, documentation that many families cannot produce. For a family already living in crisis, it can mean losing access to the very program designed to help them stabilize.

The same is true for children who speak a language other than English at home. Sixty-four percent of Massachusetts Head Start children come from homes where English is not the primary language, the highest proportion of dual language learners in Head Start of any US state.

Decades of research tell us that young children learn best when taught by bilingual educators who speak their home language. The proposed rule abandons that research, requiring all education and family services to be conducted in English while eliminating standards supporting bilingual personnel and culturally responsive services.

Again, the impact is cumulative. These changes would mean less effective communication with families, weaker family engagement, and fewer opportunities for children to learn in ways that reflect how they actually experience the world.

The proposed changes also threaten the people who make Head Start possible: its workforce. Massachusetts Head Start programs employ more than 4,000 people. These educators, family service workers, health professionals, bus drivers, and other staff build relationships that children depend on. But the proposal would increase class sizes, remove the ability for programs to invest in their workforce’s education and professional development, eliminate staff wellness and break requirements, and reduce key supports, including behavioral health and bus monitors.

The federal analysis estimates that nearly 40,000 Head Start jobs could be lost nationally. Our standards should encourage recruitment and retention in our programs, not threaten it.

Head Start works comprehensively. The harm of the proposed rule does not come from any one of the above changes alone, it comes from the compounding impact of removing services and protections for the most vulnerable children and families. The answer to Head Start’s challenges is not to expect less of it. It is to invest in the people and resources that allow it to deliver on its promise.

I am grateful that in Massachusetts, our elected leaders know the value of Head Start and we have the full support of the Healey-Driscoll administration, the state House and Senate, and the Massachusetts congressional delegation in opposing the proposal. Public comment in the Federal Register on these devastating proposed changes is open until October 6.

My organization has submitted comments – and urges others to do so as well – imploring the Trump administration to withdraw the proposed rule and protect the promise of Head Start for the next 61 years.

Michelle Haimowitz is executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, which serves as the voice of Head Start programs in Massachusetts.