Head Start preschools serve parents, too. Under Trump, advocates fear that will change

WASHINGTON (AP) — Cassie Reed and her two young children had just moved from a domestic violence shelter into a third-floor apartment in Spokane, Washington, when she spotted a soon-to-open Head Start preschool on the building's ground floor.

Much of Reed's first three decades of life had been shaped by abuse and neglect: first, she says, at the hands of her biological mother, then in foster care and, when she became an adult, in a series of romantic relationships. She had lost custody of three older children a decade earlier, in part because she lacked stable housing. By March 2022, when she had finally landed an apartment in a transitional housing program, she had lost all faith in herself.

None of that was apparent this September, when she traveled to the nation's capital to tell members of Congress how her life changed when she enrolled her children in Head Start.

Reed says Head Start helped her heal from three decades of trauma and abuse. Staff connected her to job training, taught her how to be a better mother, helped her advocate for her son’s disability accommodations at his elementary school, and urged her to join the council that oversees Head Start across Spokane County, Washington. She was elected the council's president last year.

Head Start was, Reed says, “a warm blanket in a time where I constantly felt cold.”

That could be changing.

Last month, President Donald Trump’s administration proposed gutting Head Start regulations that spell out how programs must support families with financial, education or housing concerns. Many of the services now mandated would become optional.

Reed’s transformation was no fluke: Head Start’s services for low-income parents have been central to its model for decades.

“Being told that somebody believes in you and thinks you’re a good parent after so much loss — it didn’t feel real at first,” Reed said. “It took probably a year or two for me to be like, ‘OK, maybe I am. Maybe I just went through something that was really hard, but I was doing the best that I could.’”

Head Start, a six-decade-old preschool program, works to lift children and their families out of poverty. Its two-generation approach is rooted in the idea that improving caregivers' lives is as essential to a child's success as what happens in the classroom. Parents can also serve on committees that help set the direction of their kids' preschool.

“It’s always had that family connection,” said Loukisha Smart-Pennix of the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, which oversees several Head Start centers. “That’s been part and parcel of what Head Start was built on.”

Smart-Pennix said she's proof the approach works. When she was in the program as a preschooler in the 1970s, Head Start connected her mother with a factory job. Two decades later, when Smart-Pennix enrolled her son, the center employed her and pushed her to go to college. By the time her daughter was old enough to enroll, she earned too much to qualify. (Generally, families qualify for Head Start if their income is at or below the federal poverty line, currently $33,000 for a family of four.)

Under current regulations, Head Start asks parents to set goals — to return to school, to buy a home — and then helps them stay on track to achieve them. Parents have described how Head Start has helped them stay sober, finish school, pay off debt or simply keep the lights on. Operators are required to give hiring preferences to current and former Head Start parents, so many end up working for the program. Some eventually run their own preschools.

The Trump administration proposal would water down many of the family support regulations. Goal-setting with families would be optional, as would hiring preferences for Head Start parents. It would also scrap requirements for an open-door policy that gives parents liberal access to their child's classroom and cancel a mandate that staff visit homes and hold parent-teacher conferences at least twice per year. Programs would no longer be required to help parents navigate Medicaid, even as the government-funded health insurance program's rules are becoming more complex.

Head Start preschools would also have the option of eliminating parent committees, formal groups that weigh in on curriculum and programming. And policy councils, which have parent members, would see their authority weakened under the proposal.

Alex Adams, who leads the Department of Health and Human Services office overseeing Head Start, said the goal of the changes is to empower local leaders and to increase efficiency, enabling programs to serve up to 236,000 more children without additional funding.

“A one-size-fits-all mandate from Washington cannot fully account for the realities facing these 1,600 grantees” that operate Head Start preschools, Adams told reporters in August. “Federal mandates can certainly hinder local decision-making, drive up costs and limit the program’s reach.”

The Department of Health and Human Services said the proposal still recognizes the importance of parents in a child's learning, “but substantially reduces hyper-specificity for how to fulfill requirements, specifically around how programs must engage parents and families in education and child development services.”

“The proposal gives programs room to make thoughtful adjustments when local circumstances call for them,” the department said in a statement.

Head Start backers see the proposal not as a chance for flexibility but as another effort by the Trump administration to undermine the longstanding program. Days after Trump, a Republican, took office in early 2025, some Head Start programs temporarily closed their doors due to problems accessing their federal money . Later, a White House budget draft proposed eliminating funding for Head Start . The funding was restored after widespread backlash.

Adams emphasized programs wouldn't have to use the flexibility in the proposal if they want to continue operating as they have.

“It’s not a mandate," Adams told reporters. "The opportunity for these programs to make a different decision does not necessarily mean they must make a different decision.”

But advocates are skeptical. The administration's proposal eliminates requirements for small class sizes and scraps caseload limits for family support specialists. Centers instead would abide by their state's early learning regulations, which are often more lenient.

With more kids, fewer teachers, rising costs and no material increase in funding, advocates worry programs would be forced to dilute some of Head Start’s signature offerings. The Trump administration's own projections show that to add 236,000 slots for kids, Head Start centers would have to eliminate about 25,000 teacher jobs, increase class sizes and cut three-quarters of the staff who provide in-home education for new parents.

Reed says she worries the changes could mean fewer success stories like hers.

That's how she ended up in Washington, D.C. When Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., took a seat next to her, Reed grew nervous.

“Is it OK if I just read something from my phone?” she asked, shaking. Murray nodded.

She told the senator, a former preschool teacher, about the day she moved from a domestic violence shelter into transitional housing.

“At the bottom of our stairs was a Head Start center,” she said. “I had no idea how much it would change our lives.”

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