Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
Child advocates from Texas and across the country are voicing strong opposition against proposed changes to Head Start.
The nonprofit Children At Risk held a press conference Thursday with child advocates and early childhood stakeholders to discuss the proposed overhaul and its state-by-state impacts.
Head Start programs provide free learning and development services to children from low-income families, from birth to age five.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families announced proposed sweeping changes to the program's regulations. This includes removing significant federal regulations and shifting standards towards state and local requirements, decreasing allowable administrative costs from 15% to 5%, and emphasizing English-language instruction in most programs.
The federal government said the changes would reduce significant bureaucratic burden on programs and open up new slots for kids.
"The rules that we have for Head Start right now are really good — they've worked for 60 years," said Bob Sanborn, CEO of Children at Risk. "We support efforts to reduce unnecessary federal [spending,] but this cannot come at the cost of child care quality, accountability, and safety."
Teresa Granilla, CEO of the San Antonio-based nonprofit AVANCE, said the move to prioritize English-language instruction could hurt the growth of the nearly one-third of children in Head Start who are bilingual learners.
"The research in Head Start's own resources are clear: Supporting a child's home language helps build the foundation for learning English and for later learning, " said Granilla. "An English-only approach is not simply a change in curriculum."
Children at Risk reports Texas is home to nearly 465,000 low-income children with working parents. Altogether, Head Start and Early Head Start programs have provided affordable, high-quality childcare for nearly 70,000 of those children as of last year.
Advocates in Alabama and Florida also said significantly changing the federal standards for governing Head Start services could lead to state-by-state inequities to high-quality services.
"Head Start is a staple in rural communities where there's no childcare," said Dawn Owens, the director of the Montgomery Education Foundation. "There are counties where there is no childcare, there is only Head Start, so families rely on that to work."
Public comments on the proposed changes can be submitted by Oct. 6. Learn more about how to submit a comment here.
Copyright 2026 Texas Public Radio