Leaders of Illinois Quad Cities Head Start programs are opposing proposed federal regulations that would roll back standards related to teacher qualifications, staff support, curricula and health screenings. They are being rejected by local early education advocates.
Several officials of state and local Head Start programs gathered Thursday morning, Sept. 17, at Project NOW headquarters, Rock Island, to speak out against the federal effort to reduce burdens and increase number of kids served by Head Start without boosting funding.
Project NOW’s Head Start director, Andrea Flannery, says one change to only allow English language curriculum and instruction is especially concerning since the program services a widely diverse population of children and families, who depend on bilingual staff, dual language curriculums, and abilities to provide translation services.
“Head Start was founded on a simple but revolutionary idea that every child, regardless of their family's income, deserves a fair shot at a healthy and successful life. It was designed to look at the whole child— their health, their family, their culture, and their community,” Flannery said Thursday. “But today, that foundation is facing dangerous threats across various districts and policy debates.”
Her program serves 200 students ages 3-5, and two-thirds of them are dual language learners, with Spanish, Arabic and Ewe (from Africa) languages the most common.
“The reality is that forcing Head Start to go English-only is a step backwards for us and the children that we serve,” Flannery said. “It is a policy that misunderstands child development, harms cognitive growth, and fractures the very families that Head Start is supposed to lift up.”
“We now know that languages do not weaken a child's intellect, but it actually strengthens it when they're learning two languages,” she said. “When a Head Start classroom embraces a child's native language alongside English, we are building cognitive flexibility, we're enhancing their problem-solving skills, and we're actually making it easier for them to master English later on. When we force an English-only curriculum onto a 3 or a 4-year-old who has only ever known Spanish, Arabic, or Vietnamese, we are not accelerating their learning. We are shutting them down.
“We are turning a space that should feel safe into a space that feels silent and confusing,” Flannery said. “An English-only policy severely damages the vital connection between the classroom and the home. Head Start has always prided itself on family engagement. We know that when a child succeeds, their chance of more success is when the parents actually become partners with the classrooms and the teachers and the program. So what happens when a program becomes English only? We create a language barrier between the school and the parents.
“Moms, dads, and grandparents suddenly feel excluded. They feel that their language, and by extension their culture, is not welcome. When a child is told explicitly or implicitly that their home language has no value in the classroom, a tragic divide can grow,” she said. “The child may start rejecting their native tongue at home. eroding their ability to communicate deeply with their own parents. We cannot claim to support vulnerable families while systematically dismantling the language that binds them together.”
“True integration means adding English to a child's toolkit, not subtracting their culture,” Flannery said. “We must advocate for dual language and multilingual approaches in Head Start. We need to invest in bilingual educators, culturally responsive materials, and policies that celebrate linguistic diversity as an asset, not a deficit. Let us protect the true promise of Head Start.”
Changing student group size
Another proposed change would remove specific ratio/group size requirements. Local Head Start schools currently require the ratios of children-to-staff and group sizes vary depending on the age of the children served and the type of program.
Flannery says that current rule should stay in place.
“While I understand the argument to give programs flexibility, we can’t confuse flexibility with low expectations. High-quality early learning depends on qualified teachers, strong relationships between children and adults, safe and engaging learning environments, and comprehensive services that address the whole child and their family. These things do not just happen.
“They require investment, professional expertise, and clear standards,” she said. “Every day I see the difference that quality makes. I see teachers helping young learners build early reading skills. I see them create trusting relationships. I see families setting and completing goals for themselves and their children. I see children who have significant challenges overcome trauma and make tremendous classroom progress. We should be asking how we can make those outcomes possible for more children — not how we can lower the standards that assure them.”
Teonna Dowell, director of the SAL Community Services Early Head Start (which serves kids from birth to 3), said Thursday:
“We all share the same goal: more children should have access to high-quality early learning. But access cannot come at the expense of the services and standards that help children and families succeed,” she said. “SAL Early Head Start supports local flexibility, but true flexibility must be backed by the resources needed to maintain quality, safety, staffing, and comprehensive family services.”
The main goal of national changes is to increase access to Head Start, opening up to 236,000 more slots nationwide, Dowell said.
“However, programs like ours could be expected to increase enrollment by 50 slots or more while operating within the same budget,” she noted. “Serving more children requires more than just additional classroom seats. It requires more supplies, screenings, referrals, staff time, and services. Expanding access to these services could leave children and families with less overall.”
In 2024-25, SAL Early Head Start served 217 children with funding for 168 slots, Dowell said. “The majority of the children enrolled were eligible through SNAP or TANF, showing that our program is reaching families experiencing significant economic need,” she said, noting children received dental exams and hearing and vision screenings.
“Our teachers, health team, and education specialists identified developmental concerns in 47 children, completing action plans and referrals with our community partner agencies. We also exceeded Head Start's goal for serving children with disabilities and developmental needs, with 19% of our enrolled children receiving these vital services,” Dowell said.
“By empowering our families to be their child's first and most important teacher, we helped strengthen families and built a more resilient community. During the program year, we provided nutritional education to 145 families, strengthening their ability to access healthy foods.”
Fifty-three families received emergency crisis support, including 17 families who were at risk of losing stable housing.
“These services help ensure that our children are healthy, safe, and prepared to thrive while also helping families remain stable, connected, and supported during some of their most challenging moments,” Dowell said, noting she’s also a proud Head Start graduate, as is Project NOW executive director Dr. Dwight Ford.
“As a young child, I had a learning delay and a speech impairment. And because Head Start had the services to recognize my needs early, I was able to get the support I needed to succeed,” Dowell said.
“Today, I've had the privilege of leading Head Start and Early Head Start programs that offer those same services to children and families in our communities. When we talk about standards, resources, and the future of Head Start, we're talking about whether children are noticed early enough, families are connected soon enough, and programs have the quality staff and support needed to respond. I'm proof that Head Start works when true flexibility is backed by the resources needed to keep programs strong, supported, and able to fully serve children and families.”
Reducing needed funding
Ryan Sempf, United Way Quad Cities’ chief impact officer, said “we can't expect quality to follow fewer teachers teaching more students. Funders, private dollars cannot fill the gap that an unfunded mandate places on local agencies like SAL and Head Start and Project NOW,” he said.
“We're proud to put more than $800,000 into the community to support youth education and opportunity, including many agencies that you hear today. And so if I was to say one thing, it would be we need to support our youngest Quad-City residents if we want our future to look bright,” Sempf said. “It's those students, those kids 0 to 5, that need our support the most.”
Lauri Morrison Frichtl, executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, opposes the government lowering Head Start standards.
“Less quality across our programs. And so my main goal is to tell you that the federal government hopes by removing or not emphasizing these services, they can regain funding,” she said, noting the government hopes to save $2.2 billion in the program annually.
“And by doing so, they believe that we can serve more children. But as Dr. Ford said, and also our United Way colleague, by doing so you lessen the quality in the work that goes on within the programs. So the projection is that we'll spend less per child and use the difference to enroll more children. Less funding per child, enroll more children.”
Head Start providers will continue doing the work, “but the funds will not be there,” Frichtl said, noting teachers will have to handle much larger class sizes. “Our programs have moved to smaller class sizes over the last few years so that they can deliver more individualized attention for our children. So we'll spend far less per child, for our children, far less on family services, far less for health services.”
“Head Start dollars are already stretched thin in Illinois,” she added. “So serving more children without reducing outcomes and asking families to accept less requires an increase in federal investment. So we should be asking for more federal investment in Head Start, not taking away what we know works. We heard it from children and families that need those services the most.”
The state association says many Head Start programs have already reduced group sizes and/or added additional teachers to classrooms to support quality interactions and individualized attention.
“Head Start programs serve some of Illinois’ most vulnerable children. Since the pandemic, teachers report that many children are presenting with increasingly significant developmental, behavioral, and social-emotional needs. Many programs already struggle to meet those needs under existing ratios,” an association policy paper says, supporting lower teacher-child ratios.
“Increasing the number of children assigned to each teacher would not solve the workforce crisis. It could increase workload, accelerate burnout, and contribute to additional turnover,” the group says. “Illinois Head Start and Early Head Start programs are already struggling to maintain their current level of services with limited and flat funding.” Plus, current funding has not kept pace with costs, it says.
Other rule changes
Two other rule changes which are drawing ire are the elimination of incentives for staff to obtain annual professional development and post-secondary education as well as removing the health screenings and medical services.
Marcy Mendenhall, CEO of SAL Community Services, says these changes do not take the needs of the whole child or family into consideration and that make them workable.
“The proposed changes would shift priorities related to child health, mental health services, classroom safety, staffing ratios, and family support services that are fundamental to the success of Early Head Start programs and the well-being of the children and families they serve. We want to highlight the importance of maintaining the current standards that holistically support children, families, and infants and toddlers served through Early Head Start.”
Head Start leaders say Head Start succeeds because it supports the whole child and empowers the entire family. By eliminating mandatory staff-to-child ratios, weakening protections for children with disabilities, and restricting support for multilingual families, these proposed changes strip away the exact tools that communities rely on to help children thrive.
“Weakening the federal standards regarding health and safety would make it more difficult for consistency for identification of children's needs,” Mendenhall said.
“This is an early intervention approach. It's one of the most effective investments that the federal government can make in a child's future. It provides a foundation for our children that they need to have success in school and throughout life. We cannot afford to let our children fall through the cracks," she said. "Delayed information and referral can lead to greater challenges, increased costs for the K-12 system, and additional strain on our community resources.”
“We invest into the community by offering exceptional early care and education, supporting families to find jobs and retain them, and to help them stay employed,” she added. “Head Start matters. Early Head Start matters. Remember, we're not babysitters. We are early care and education subject matter experts who are building the next generation of leaders, as evidenced by Dr. Rev. Ford and Teonna.”
Laura Flores Cardenas, a Spanish-speaking parent (of two girls, 10 and 5, who went through Head Start) and a Head Start teacher, said the invaluable program gave her the voice that she needed to advocate for her girls.
“Project NOW Head Start is just not an educational program,” she said through a translator, Lupe Pollock. “It's the motor that transforms a home, and builds communities strong.” Cardenas credited Flannery for inspiring her and pushing her to do her best.
“Project NOW Head Start gave me back the control of my life and the confidence of myself,” she said. “What I can do. To all the team of Project NOW, my coworkers, every person that believed in me, thank you for creating the space, where people not just learn -- you transform a person. Thank you for giving to our community a secure place, full of love. And education to our children. My life changed because I said yes.”
In an Aug. 6 press release on the federal changes, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said of the 61-year-old program:
“My uncle, Sarge Shriver, founded the program on a simple conviction: strong families, wholesome nutrition, and healthy childhood development can change the course of a child’s life. Today, we are returning Head Start to those roots. We are removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands more children. That’s how we renew the promise of Head Start for the next generation.”
Public comments on proposed changes are due by Oct. 6, 2026. To submit comments and for more information, click HERE.
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