Leadership in Action: Congresswoman Luz Rivas Visits Head Start Site
2026
For over sixty years, Head Start has helped provide comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and family-support services to children and families across the United States. Head Start empowers families and brings economic stability to California. However, on August 7, 2026, the federal Administration for Children and Families published a sweeping proposed rule to rescind and replace the Head Start Program Performance Standards. Although described as reducing bureaucracy and increasing local flexibility, the proposal would weaken federal protections that ensure children and families receive consistent, high-quality services. Four proposed changes, detailed in Table 1 below, are especially concerning for California families.
After these federal Head Start changes were proposed, Congresswoman Luz Rivas, along with staff from U.S. Senator Adam Schiff and Early Edge California, visited CCRC’s Miguel Montes Head Start site to hear from parents, teachers, and community members about the lifelong impact Head Start programs have on local children and families. The visit provided an opportunity for those closest to the program to share their experiences and speak directly on the vital role Head Start plays in supporting children’s development, strengthening families, and building brighter futures. We’d like to thank the Congresswoman for taking the time to connect with us and discuss how the proposed changes to Head Start will affect the lives of children and families across the state.
Hear Directly from Congresswoman Luz Rivas About Her Visit to a CCRC Head Start Site
Recommendations and Sharing Your Story
Congress should urge HHS to withdraw or substantially revise these provisions and preserve strong national Head Start standards. Congress should also conduct oversight regarding the proposal’s effects on multilingual children, comprehensive services, enrollment access and the financial stability of local grantees.
Head Start prepares children and families to succeed in school and in life. With the proposed changes to Head Start, it's more important than ever to share the impact of this program with our legislators. Share your story with us! If you have a Head Start story you’d like to share, we invite you submit it at ccrcca.org/mystory.
Table 1: Proposed Changes to National Head Start Standards
Proposed Change
What Would Change
Potential Impact
1. English-Only Instruction
The proposal would require nearly all Head Start education to be conducted in English and replace the current expectation that programs support both English acquisition and children’s home-language development. This would be especially harmful in California, where many Head Start children are dual-language learners.
Research supports maintaining and developing a child’s home language while building English proficiency. An English-only mandate could disrupt learning, weaken communication between children and educators, marginalize multilingual families, and force programs to replace instructional materials or retrain staff. ACF estimates that approximately one-third of nontribal Head Start classrooms nationwide could be affected.
2. Cuts to Comprehensive Services
Head Start’s defining strength is that it provides early education together with health, mental-health, dental, nutrition, disability and family-support services. The proposal would remove numerous federal requirements governing these services, including requirements related to:
· Monthly mental-health consultation; Health determinations and developmental screening procedures; Helping families access health care and insurance; Oral-health practices such as daily tooth brushing; Health and Mental Health Services Advisory Committees; and a maximum 40-to-1 family-service-worker caseload.
Programs could choose to continue these services, but removing federal standards makes them more vulnerable to budget pressures and creates uneven access across communities. California’s fragmented health and social-service systems make Head Start’s coordination and navigation role particularly important.
3. New Barriers to Enrollment
The NPRM would eliminate self-attestation as a method of establishing eligibility, require additional income and public-assistance documentation, remove flexibility for families unable to produce proof of a child’s age, and end the option to account for excessive housing costs when evaluating family income.
These changes would disproportionately burden families experiencing homelessness, unstable employment, immigration-related concerns or difficulty obtaining government records. Eliminating the housing-cost adjustment is particularly disconnected from California, where families may technically exceed federal poverty guidelines while spending most of their income on rent.
4. Administrative Cost Cap
The proposal would reduce the maximum share of Head Start funding available for administrative costs from 15% to 5%. Current administrative costs average approximately 11.2%, and only 3.7% of Head Start grants presently operate at or below the proposed limit.
A 5% cap would not eliminate essential administrative responsibilities. Programs would still need qualified fiscal, human-resources, compliance, data, enrollment and facilities staff. The change could therefore force programs to shift costs, eliminate essential positions, consolidate services or seek discretionary federal waivers.
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