Not ‘just a daycare’
Indiana leaders fear fallout from Head Start Proposal
BY ANNA CECIL
A federal proposal could roll back most performance standards for Head Start, a program for low-income children under age 5. Officials warn the changes could jeopardize the health, safety and education of vulnerable young Hoosiers.
Rhett Cecil, executive director of the Indiana Head Start Association, said federal policy sets performance standards and guidelines for how each branch of the service operates.
Indiana’s Early Head Start, which serves infants and their mothers, and Head Start, which serves toddlers up to age 5, reached more than 11,000 Hoosier children in 2025.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services opened a 60-day public comment period in August for the proposed rule changes, which ended last week, drawing more than 40,000 responses.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, said the changes aim to reduce “unnecessary bureaucracy.”
When the department announced the proposal in August, it said the rule reduction would allow the program to expand by 236,000 slots and save $2.2 billion.
In an August press release, the department added that the changes would preserve parental oversight and nutrition and exercise guidelines, reduce administrative and overhead costs, align programs with state standards and remove duplicative guidelines.
The press release also said nothing in the proposal “alters or waives statutory obligations.” Cecil, though, said the proposal could erase more than 90% of Head Start’s standards.
In a press release, the Indiana Head Start Association raised concerns about eliminating guidelines for teaching multilingual students and students with disabilities. The association also warned that parents could have less input in decisions affecting their children and that reduced funding could force programs to cut staff.
Health and Human Services’ proposal could also eliminate standards for educational quality, child development, child safety and family services such as infant and maternal health.
If the proposal passes, many wraparound services, such as mental health and developmental delay screenings, would no longer be required, Cecil said.
Current standards prohibit Head Start programs from expelling students with behavioral issues and instead require programs to provide social-emotional and mental health support from a care team.
This type of care is also at risk, Cecil said.
Because the proposal would leave new expulsion rules up to the states, he worries Indiana might not uphold current protections, leaving teachers and families unclear about guidelines.
“The current standards, as they are stated, take any and all ambiguity out of it,” Cecil said. “The removal of that expulsion piece affords programs opportunities to change policies or have to defend a policy that says ‘we’re not going to have expulsions.’”
Tauhric Brown is chief executive officer of Bauer Family Resources, which operates Head Start facilities and connects families to programs. He also expressed concerns about the ambiguity of the federal proposal’s guidelines.
He said many educators and caregivers could be left wondering about best practices for class sizes and teacher-to-student ratios, potentially prompting them to default to state standards. In Indiana, the ratio is 1 teacher for every 27 students.
“I don’t believe there is a lot of early childhood education taking place with 1 to 27,” Brown said.
Head Start requirements differ by age, with more practitioners required for younger groups.
Brown emphasized that Head Start is more than a daycare. Instead, he said, the program has spent 60 years preparing children for kindergarten by developing their reading, listening and social skills through its established standards.
“These performance standards are extremely critical. … A Head Start program and a traditional daycare are not apples to apples,” he said. “We stand on that, and we hope that the performance standards will stay as they are.”
Jennifer Cropper is an Early Head Start home visit coordinator, a role that helps families with newborns adjust to caring for a baby.
Cropper, also a Head Start mom, said the program helped her build a support system, earn her bachelor’s degree and join the workforce, which eventually led her back to Head Start, where she has worked for a decade.
“Early Head Start became my village when I had young children at home,” Cropper said. “They’ve literally wrapped their arms around me and embraced me from the very beginning.”
She said the federal proposal threatens the program’s foundation. She worries that the quality of care could decline and established operating standards could be erased.
Cropper also fears that practitioners will no longer focus on education or family well-being.
“If this goes through, it’s literally going to crumble,” she said. “You might as well say we’re just a daycare at that point.”
Cecil said he is open to reevaluating Head Start standards but wants federal officials to visit programs and review research and data before making sweeping changes.
“You don’t make decisions in ivory towers in Washington, D.C., as a political appointee without coming out to the field and talking to the practitioners,” he said.
Rep. André Carson, who represents the Indianapolis area on Capitol Hill, told State Affairs that research shows Head Start programs can significantly change a child’s life trajectory.
He is especially concerned about children from multilingual families, which make up more than 30% of the program’s population, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.
Carson, a former Head Start child, hopes that if Democrats take control of the House in November, his bill, the Every Child Deserves a Head Start Act, will pass and restore funding cuts made under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I’m just one example of someone who benefitted, and I think that investing in our kids is the best investment we can make,” Carson said. “Protecting and strengthening Head Start would be a top priority for me.”
Cropper shared another Head Start success story of a mother who, when she first joined the program, was reluctant to hold her baby, sing to the child or read aloud.
“By the end of it, she would hold her baby through every feeding. She would read to them almost daily. She would sing to them almost daily, and she would have that interaction and that connection with them,” Cropper said. “That changed the trajectory of all of her children.”
Anna Cecil is a Statehouse reporter for State Affairs/Howey Politics Indiana. Find her on X @AnnaCecil227 or email her at acecil@stateaffairs.com.