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In New York State, Head Start serves 43,300 kids and 900 pregnant women, providing low-income families—including those experiencing homelessness, in foster care, or receiving public assistance—with free childcare, early education, nutrition assistance and other services.
A proposed overhaul of the federal Head Start program—including that instruction under the 60-year-old anti-poverty initiative, which supports school readiness for children from birth to age 5, be in English only—could have a big impact in New York, one of the country’s most linguistically diverse areas.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to replace existing performance standards, which set minimum requirements and quality expectations for these programs, with a substantially less prescriptive set of rules, giving states and local providers more latitude.
The administration says the reforms will reduce bureaucracy, lower costs, and allow providers to serve more children. But critics say loosening federal standards could lead to worse or inconsistent levels of care, and that proposed cuts will jeopardize local programs.
“Dismantling of the federal Head Start program would take our country in exactly the wrong direction, putting countless children and families at risk,” a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement to City Limits this week. “Every child, no matter the language they speak, the borough they call home or their immigration status, deserves access to high-quality, accessible early care and education.”
Head Start serves more than 750,000 children across the country every year, offering free childcare, early education, nutrition assistance, health screenings, and resources for pregnant women. It primarily aids children from low-income families, including those who are experiencing homelessness, in foster care, or receiving public assistance.
Funding comes directly from the federal government to providers, and in New York State, Head Start serves 43,300 kids and 900 pregnant women, according to the Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.
“The Trump administration’s heartless attacks on Head Start and other programs serving low-income New Yorkers are already causing strain for families and providers across the state,” a spokesperson for the governor said in a statement.
For New York, one of the most consequential changes is a proposed requirement that all instruction be conducted in English. This represents a major departure from previous Head Start performance standards, which viewed a child’s native language as an asset rather than a barrier to learning, and promoted literacy in both the child’s home language and English—requiring programs to support bilingualism.
“Removing hyper-specific directives on how to meet these requirements gives recipients more flexibility to design comprehensive services best suited to their community’s needs,” a spokesperson for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the federal agency in charge of managing the program, said in a statement.
ACF estimates that 33.4 percent of non-tribal Head Start service locations could be impacted by the language requirement, representing an estimated 18,767 classrooms.
The agency acknowledged “additional costs or operational challenges for programs serving dual-language learners or operating in predominantly non-English-speaking communities,” in places like Puerto Rico and for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start, a specialized version of the program serving low-income agricultural worker families.
Neither local or federal officials were able to specify how many New York programs would be impacted by the language mandate. According to the governor’s office, Head Start is currently operating in 927 licensed child care sites with 14,400 staff members across the state.
About 3.8 million people, or almost half of New York City residents, speak a language other than English at home, according to the city’s 2026 Newest New Yorkers report.
“For preschoolers, English-only is no better than dual language programs for learning English and is much worse for learning the other language,” explained Dr. W. Steven Barnett, founder and senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research. “Since there are cognitive, social, and economic advantages to being multilingual, this harms the child, the state, and the nation.”
Barnett added that there was no evidence-based reason for this policy, though the administration argues that the change will redirect resources toward “assimilation” and reduce costs by minimizing non-essential multilingual services.
HHS is proposing other reforms: changing teacher-to-child ratios; reducing mental health and health care coordination; allowing the expulsion or suspension of children; erasing staff qualifications and changing lead exposure requirements; and making parent committees—which each center had to have so parents could weigh in on activities and services—optional.
“The federal government’s proposed rules—enforcing English-only instruction and making parent input optional—decenter our children’s needs at a time when families are especially vulnerable,” said Anita Gundanna and Vanessa Leung, co-executive directors of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, in a statement.
Administrative cuts
The proposed changes would also slash administrative costs for Head Start providers from 15 percent to 5 percent.
“That funding supports the salaries, rent, utilities, legal, HR, finance, and IT infrastructure that keeps a program like ours running responsibly. A cut that steep has real consequences for nonprofits,” said a rep for Catholic Charities Neighborhood Services, which runs Head Start (for preschool children aged 3 to 5) and Early Head Start programs (for infants and toddlers up to age 3, and pregnant women) in Brooklyn and Queens.
Barnett labeled the cuts as “completely unrealistic.”
ACF estimates that capping administrative costs at 5 percent of total approved program spending would save approximately $754 million annually.
“The proposed rule would let Head Start programs align group size and staff-to-child ratios with applicable state and local law, rather than a single federally mandated standard, currently among the most restrictive in early childhood education,” an ACF spokesperson said.
The public may submit comments on the federal government’s Head Start proposals until Oct. 6. Then HHS will review the comments and issue a final rule, a process that can take time months or longer.
In the meantime, advocates urged local elected officials to take a stand.
“Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul must stand up to the federal government, fight back against these Head Start changes, and commit the local funding and resources needed to ensure bilingual instruction and family support can meet the needs of our youngest learners,” said Gundanna and Leung.
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