‘Families need an ecosystem of support:’ proposed changes to Head Start could put vulnerable Arizona families at risk
The Trump administration could remove federal standards for the early education program, leaving more decisions up to states.
Source: AZPM Original article available at the link below; full text pasted below.
Gabby Berryhill’s 5-year-old son, Lincoln, is off to kindergarten this year. He still struggles to speak, but he can count to 100 and write his name from memory.
He likes to build structures with magnetic building blocks and play an aggressive game of flag football.
While Lincoln was attending Pima Head Start preschool in Graham County, Berryhill says the teachers bent over backwards to support him and the rest of their family while navigating his speech delay.
“They held me together and encouraged me and they gave me resources because I would ask for homework from his speech therapist in Safford and I wouldn’t get it,” she says.
Head Start is for families with children aged birth to 5 who are below the federal poverty guidelines. That means they earn an income of less than $33,000 for a family of four. Above-income families may qualify if extra seats are open at a particular facility.
Across the country, there are more than 700,000 children in Head Start programs that offer free early childhood education, health and nutritional services and developmental screenings.
But potential changes to Head Start recently proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration could completely change the effectiveness of the 60-year-old program for more than 16,000 kids in Arizona — including Berryhill’s 3-year-old daughter who’s starting her first year in Head Start.
Parents and early education professionals worry those changes would make it easier to completely gut Head Start in the future.
Bigger classes put strain on teachers
Among the many potential changes outlined in the 75-page proposal, the Department of Health and Human Services pushes for a shift away from federal Head Start standards to individual state laws when it comes to classroom size. Providers in Arizona would be expected to meet a maximum staff-student ratio of 1-to-20 for classes with 4 year olds. Currently, for 4-year-old classes with at least 20 kids, more than one staff member is required to man the classroom.
Lincoln’s 4-year-old classroom in Head Start was at a 1-to-6 staff-student ratio. Berryhill says that allowed him to get the support he needed in math, literacy and speech development.
Health and Human Services says the changes would reduce bureaucracy and expand access to Head Start. While Berryhill thinks opening more seats is a noble goal in theory, she says these changes will limit the quality of care that students receive because there’s no proposal to increase the program’s $12 billion budget.
“When you look at doubling kids, it sounds great and I love that in an area where I know so many children walk into kindergarten never having stepped foot in a classroom,” Berryhill says. “But when you look at the implementation, the practicality of it, it's not feasible. If we want to double, we have to also increase the budget.”
Berryhill is the chairperson of Pima Head Start’s policy council which is made up of parents. She’s also a probation officer for Graham County, and says she recognizes the classroom dynamics that already make teaching stressful.
“When I walk into the classroom with the information that I know from my job, or even just living in a small community and I see a child acting out, that puts incredible pressure on the teachers because — one — they're trying to keep other children safe. They're trying to keep themselves safe and they're also trying to keep that student who is having an existential crisis safe,” Berryhill says.
‘Families need an ecosystem of support in order to raise thriving children.’
Claire Louge is the executive director at Prevent Child Abuse Arizona, a nonprofit headquartered in Prescott Valley that works with other organizations to streamline family support systems across the state.
Regarding child abuse and neglect, Louge says Arizona has “failed to create a robust prevention system that includes child care.”
“Families need an ecosystem of support in order to raise thriving children. And quality child care is part of the ecosystem that stabilizes families,” she says.
According to the framework Louge’s organization uses, that stability is dependent on five elements: parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting, concrete support in times of need and a child’s social and emotional competence.
When those elements are out of balance, the likelihood of crisis stress, and of abuse or neglect, increases, Louge says. She says the Trump administration’s proposals would jeopardize the opportunity to give vulnerable families what they need in a high-quality setting.
The new rules would require English-only instruction in all Head Start facilities. The proposal says that “if a child’s native language is not English, and the child does not speak English, a program must prioritize teaching English to the child.”
The administration is also proposing to remove the program’s performance standards, effectively gutting the requirements in place for the timing and methods of developmental screenings for children. It says that’s in an effort to “reduce administrative burden.”
Kyrstyn Paulat is the director of early care and education at the Arizona nonprofit Children’s Action Alliance. She says the proposal removes requirements related to mental health and maternal and newborn services, too.
“When we're seeing maternal health supports and mental health supports at a nationwide low right now, that's certainly concerning because it does disproportionately impact women in lower-income communities,” she said.
The proposed changes are currently under a public comment period that ends on Oct. 6. There were more than 1,200 comments posted as of Monday.
“Without consistent national standards, access to these services and the quality of care could vary more widely across programs, potentially affecting children's early development and family support,” one comment reads.
“I have significant concerns regarding the proposal to reduce the allowable administrative cost cap from 15% to 5%,” another comment reads. “Administrative costs are not simply ‘overhead.’ They support the essential infrastructure required to operate safe, accountable, high-quality early childhood programs, including financial management, human resources, technology, compliance, facilities, payroll, background checks, enrollment, and program oversight.”
A shared responsibility
The childcare landscape in Arizona is already fragile. There are more than 14,000 children from almost 9,000 families on the waitlist to receive childcare assistance from the Department of Economic Security.
According to a memo from Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher, 630 kids were on the waitlist for the Pima Early Education Program (PEEPs) at the end of May. PEEPS connects families who are at or below 300% of the Federal Poverty Level to preschools in public districts, extended day Head Start programs and Quality First scholarships.
Louge says there is no singular entity that should take responsibility for building a quality childcare infrastructure. And she says there’s hope for the future of Arizona’s children because of the many people who are devoted to protecting it.
“The persistence that continues to exist despite the volatility of the landscape is inspiring to me,” Louge says.
Her team at Prevent Child Abuse Arizona and the Children’s Action Alliance have drafted a legislative bill that lays out the infrastructure of childcare that is focused on Family Resource Centers — what Louge sees as a preventative measure for a familial instability.
The resource centers are hubs where parents can feel safe to do a range of things: hang out with their kids and read, take family fitness classes or get help with utilities or food when budgets are tight.
There are 65 Family Resource Centers across Arizona, Louge says, and there’s $10 million from the state to fund them. By comparison, the Department of Child Protective Services is a $1.3 billion agency — an agency that intervenes in family crises.
“We, of course, need to intervene, but if we're not preventing the problem, we're going to need to spend way more money on intervention,” Louge says. “If we cut Head Start, if we do not address our child care crisis in Arizona, we are guaranteed to get worse.”
Prevent Child Abuse Arizona and the Children’s Action Alliance are now in the process of finding a sponsor to introduce the bill in 2027.
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