Letter to the Administration for Children and Families

From: Chase Martin, Chairman, American Resolve
To: Administration for Children and Families
RE: ACF-2026-0595: Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs (RIN number 0970-AD30)

Comment in Support of Proposed Rule: Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs

American Resolve Institute (ARI) is committed to a future grounded in the values on which our nation was founded. We advance these ideals through research, education, and thoughtful dialogue, working alongside leaders across the country who believe America thrives when it rewards opportunity, fosters innovation, and protects freedom.

We write in support of this proposed rule and urge ACF to adopt it, as written, as a finalized rule. ARI believes strongly that existing government programs should deliver the maximum value both to the citizens they were intended to help and to the taxpayers who pay for them. Programs created to help Americans living in poverty do not exist for the purpose of satisfying a bureaucrat’s all-consuming desire to order the lives of others down to the most trivial minutiae of day-to-day routines. These programs especially do not exist to pad a secondary industry growing out of the compliance costs of federal regulations.

The proposed rule outlines in grim detail the spiraling nature of Head Start’s administrative costs and burdens. An 11 percent increase in administrative spending coupled with nearly 100,000 fewer children served in just a few years is a damning indictment of the status quo. The 130-page Program Performance Standard rulebook, built up especially during the Obama and Biden Administrations, dictated from Washington exactly what must happen at preschools thousands of miles away. The federal government became obsessed with babysitting the babysitters.

The prospect of reducing administrative costs by two-thirds and freeing up $2.2 billion annually to provide services to an additional 236,000 of America’s most vulnerable children is precisely what this program desperately needs. The children of Head Start will not be deprived of opportunities by the elimination of regulations dictating when provider committees must meet, how much mulch is in the playground, and how many monitors are required for school buses.

Instead, new measures in the proposed rule ensuring children receive healthy, nutrient-dense foods and enjoy the opportunity for physical play outdoors will build healthy lifelong habits. ARI strongly supports Secretary Kennedy’s efforts to Make America Healthy Again and we believe those efforts are most successful when they focus on the youngest Americans.

We are also encouraged by the proposal’s emphasis on empowering teachers to make decisions on an individual basis and to include parents in those decisions. Parents and teachers have a deeper understanding of how to correct behavior and mold a happy and productive young person than thousands of federal officials in faraway offices.

When struggling parents send children to school, they like to envision teachers reading to their children, preparing healthy meals with them, and taking them outside to play. Parents don’t envision teachers preoccupied with paperwork, federal rules, and calls with compliance advisors. This rulemaking proposal helps to fulfill the original intent of the Head Start program and implement a vision that puts children first.

Respectfully submitted,

Chase Martin