Over the course of the last two years, many federal budget cuts have been made across the board. These include cuts to education, health care and social services and they have ranged in impact. A new proposal takes aim at the Head Start early childhood program.
The federally funded Head Start program has provided free early childhood education, health, nutrition and family support services to low-income children and their families for more than six decades.
The "federally funded" part is again under threat, as proposed changes to the program focus on shifting responsibility to the individual states. This comes after the Trump administration's previous efforts to zero out Head Start as a line item in the federal budget. The current move is more death by deregulation, according to experts who run Head Start programs in Bloomington-Normal.
Executive Director Chuck Hartseil of Bloomington's Heartland Head Start said the Trump administration's proposal to shift Head Start toward local control could hurt the program.
“Currently, the Head Start Act is a federal act, and we have federal standards. The revision that's coming is looking at us to apply the state and local standards and laws to our operation, and those are different than what our current actions are,” Hartseil said.
Right now, the Head Start program features several different teacher-to-student ratios depending on the age of the children:
- Toddlers [Under Age 3]: Maximum of 8 children with 2 teachers [a 1:4 ratio], or 9 children with 3 teachers [max group size of 8-9]
- 3-Year-Olds: Maximum of 17 children in a classroom with two staff members, such as a teacher and a teaching assistant [max group size of 15]
- 4-Year-Olds: Historically capped at a 1:10 staff-to-child ratio [max group size of 17]
If switched to the standards in the state of Illinois, ratios could look more like this, according to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services:
- Toddlers: 1 staff to 5 children [max group size of 15]
- Three Years: 1 staff to 10 children [max group size of 20]
- Four Years: 1 staff to 10 children [max group size of 20]
“We provide education to our children and prepare them for kindergarten readiness, and so changing those ratios, in that way, will lessen our ability to meet the individual needs of students, as well as looking at the burnout of staff in those higher numbers while trying to accomplish our goals,” Hartseil said.
Ratio changes are most often associated with layoffs in education, as every additional widening of the ratio means one less teacher. This could be seen across more than 1,600 Head Start programs to varying degrees. Heartland Head Start is already working with Illinois to protect their existing ratios.
“The state of Illinois has implemented a new Illinois Department of Early Childhood, who will be responsible for looking at setting those ratios, we've been working with them as they have come on board, and one of the aspects that we would do is then talk with them and look at getting them to accept our ratio of staff to student, because we're not just a daycare; we are an educational institution,” Hartseil said.
This time is different
It is no secret the Head Start program has seen dwindling numbers in the last decade. According to HeadStart.gov, numbers have fallen from just over one million participants nationwide to around 770,000 today. Despite this, Head Start has been shown to increase school readiness.
According to the National Institute of Health [NIH], children show measurable improvements in language, literacy, math skills and social-emotional behavior by the time they leave the program. The NIH also noted higher rates of dental check-ups and reduced risk of child welfare or foster care involvement.
Although these changes may seem striking, it is not the first time Head Start has been under threat.
Hartseil said this time is different.
“I think the difference is, one, the manner of approach in which these provisions were recommended in that they came out of the Health and Human Services Department without a lot of collaboration with other federal and/or state officials in order to see what the impact is,” he said. “Two, is the dramatic change in the establishment of the standards themselves. We've talked about the previous attempts in regard to this, and it was not such a wide sweeping change as these are.”
Although Head Start programs may be facing many challenges because of the proposal, Hartseil is not convinced they are all negatives.
“I think that there are some administrative provisions that they have advocated that will be helpful in reducing some of the bureaucracy that we have to operate under,” he said. “The standards as they exist are very prescriptive, and so I think that yes, a reduction in some of that prescriptive activity that we have to go through would benefit the Head Start agencies."
Although Hartseil is able to look at some positives, he said even these have rebuttals. In fact, most Head Start programs view the proposal as "death by 1,000 cuts," which Hartseil thinks is the point.
“The provisions are basically based on funding reduction, and in one of two aspects: one is less services that they're going to provide, and two is looking at passing some of the costs along to the state,” Hartseil said.
Demand for Head Start remains high in B-N
Mendy Smith is the vice president of early childhood services at the statewide nonprofit Brightpoint that maintains six Early Head Start and Head Start programs in Illinois, including one in Bloomington.
“Head Start provides not just the quality childcare that people hear about, but the additional wraparound services to serve the whole family,” Smith said.
Part of what the proposal threatens, she said, is the ability for staff to continue to provide these wraparound services.
“One piece is the financial piece. We're losing 10% of indirect costs for administrative support, and so that would mean that as an agency, we would have to find those dollars somewhere else,” Smith said.
Despite the aforementioned enrollment drop overall, that has not been the case for either Head Start facility in Bloomington-Normal. Hartseil said, if anything, they are currently over-enrolled, and Smith said their program has seen a recent bump.
“In the last two years, we've actually seen a significant bump where our capacity has been over that 97% threshold, which is wonderful. I think also this community is finding ways to not only work together, but to find out actually what the gaps are and not over duplicate. ...How we can serve more with with sometimes even less resources than we had prior?” Smith said.
The public comment period for the current Health and Human Services proposal ends Oct. 6.
Hartseil and Smith voiced concerns over possible fragmentation among the programs by giving administration of Head Start over to the states.
“I think it will break up the continuity that you have as a national standard that has made Head Start so successful over these years, because different states interpret things differently than the federal government does. And so losing that umbrella, I think, is a potentially devastating aspect to Head Start and its success,” Hartseil said.
Part of the power and the magic of Head Start is that it has this full standard and approach to doing it the same way, and I think that's why we were able to say that it actually works,” Smith said.
Both are holding out hope for changes to the proposal before it comes into effect, but they acknowledge the challenges heading their way if not.
“The thing that always gets me is hearing the stories from families that have actually accessed the services and how them coming for one thing, education, has become so much more,” Smith said. “Finding out ways how they can get that job, to get that house, to put them in a better spot to be their child's biggest advocate — those individual stories of people that use the service actually are impacting our whole community, and our whole community gets the benefit of it.”
