Comment on FR Doc # 2026-09383

Restoring Flexibility To Support Head Start Program Access, RIN 0970-AD21 I appreciate the Administration’s commitment to expanding access to early childhood education and care provided by Head Start, however, I am concerned that the proposed changes in this rule will not lead to increased access to Head Start. Only addressing funding or local labor market forces will have that impact. A strong Head Start program is built on stability, and that stability comes from a consistent and qualified workforce. Teachers, family service staff, bus drivers, and program leaders, who show up every day for hundreds of thousands of eligible children and families, are the heart of Head Start. We must do everything we can to recruit, retain, and support these dedicated staff, including paying them a competitive salary that reflects their training and expertise. In today’s federal funding environment, the compensation needed to recruit and retain qualified staff competes directly with other increasing program expenses. This means that we are forced to make hard choices every day, such as reducing staffing and eliminating wage comparability increases. We are also facing rising costs beyond salaries. Expenses for food, transportation, facilities, insurance, and other essentials have steadily increased in recent years, while federal funding has remained largely flat and is again proposed at similar levels for FY27. Over the past two years, our organization’s food costs increased by more than 8%, business insurance by more than 11%, and health care costs by more than 18%. Without funding increases, we must make difficult decisions within its budget to support these increases. Eliminating this regulatory floor, as proposed in this NPRM, does not eliminate the underlying cost pressure, it simply removes the federal requirement to address it, leaving us to navigate an impossible tension between serving more children and paying the staff who serve them fairly. We share the goal of expanding access to the gold standard of early childhood care and education, Head Start. However, simply repealing the workforce compensation provisions of the 2024 final rule will not change these underlying fiscal pressures. The funding challenge is real and requires action from both Congress and the administration. Without meaningful investment, we are forced into difficult trade-offs that affect both access and quality.