Proposed Trump overhaul of Head Start raises anxiety for California providers and families

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Set us as preferred The Trump administration is planning to overhaul Head Start by turning over most of its quality standards to state control and tightening requirements for parents who are homeless or unemployed, two people familiar with the deliberations said.Word of the impending changes are raising anxiety for California advocates, providers and families who rely on the early education program and are concerned about future access to disadvantaged children.Head Start, which is federally funded and serves low-income children, was established in the 1960s to help fight poverty and has long been considered by early childhood education experts to be a gold standard early learning program.

California receives $1.5 billion annually in federal Head Start funding, serving 84,000 children across the state.Its regulations, which stretch more than 100 pages, outline requirements on everything from child-to-teacher ratios and child health screenings to family engagement.

The planned changes would replace those regulations with around a dozen pages of rules, leaving most of the specifics up to state and local law, said the people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not yet public and because they feared reprisal.The draft rules would require more documentation from parents who are homeless or unemployed, the people familiar with the deliberations told the Associated Press.

An early version of the proposal also would have barred parents who are in the United States illegally from enrolling their children, even if the children are U.S.citizens.

It’s unclear whether those provisions will make the final draft.Word of the potential overhaul — which must undergo a public comment period before becoming final — has been spreading throughout the state for weeks, fom...