HHS repeals a Biden-Era Rule and saves more than $2 billion in the Head Start program

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) repealed a Biden administration rule that required raising the salaries of Head Start teachers, the federal free preschool program for children from low-income families. According to the Trump administration, the measure will save more than $2 billion annually starting in 2031 and will allow some 106,000 children to retain their spots in the program.

In August 2024, the Biden administration approved a regulation requiring Head Start programs with more than 200 slots to pay their educators salaries comparable to those of preschool teachers in public schools in their area, or at least 90% of a kindergarten teacher's salary.

The change was to be implemented by August 1, 2031. Furthermore, starting in 2028, they were required to offer health insurance and other benefits to full-time staff. According to the Biden administration, these teachers were paid less than those in public schools, and many were quitting to take better-paying jobs; therefore, the measure aimed to address the need to retain staff.

What's changing now?  

In this context, as reported exclusively by the Daily Signal, the Trump administration introduced a new rule: "Restoring Flexibility to Support Access to Head Start."

According to HHS, the issue with Joe Biden's regulation was funding. Since Head Start receives a fixed amount of funding from Congress each year, if salaries rise and the budget does not increase, the only way to pay them is to serve fewer children.

They estimated that Biden's rule would have cost about $2 billion a year starting in 2031. To cover that expense, the programs would have had to turn away more than 100,000 children.

"This is a fixed grant program. So every dollar that has to go to one of the things that is required federally have to come from somewhere else. So what administration or what programs have done is they just reduce the number of slots available to kids," Alex Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, explained to the Daily Signal.

"Over time, regulation basically added on top of regulation, and it drove up the cost of doing business. As a result, we’ve seen the number of Head Start slots dropping from a million slots down to 660,000 in the most recent year," he added.

With the repeal of the regulation, the government estimates that approximately 84,000 Head Start spots for children aged 3 to 5, and another 22,000 Early Head Start spots for children under 3, will be preserved. Furthermore, the more than $2 billion saved annually can be reinvested into the program.

Thus, each program will be able to set its own pay scales, and those that wish to do so may continue to pay salaries comparable to those in public schools.