Head Start

What this funds

The Head Start program was established as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-452) and most recently reauthorized under the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-134). The program provides grants directly to local public and private non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive early learning and development services to economically disadvantaged children and families. The Early Head Start program was established as part of the Head Start Amendments Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-252) to serve pregnant women and children from birth to three In FY 2025, Congress provided $12.27 billion for the Head Start Preschool and Early Head Start programs (hereafter, collectively referred to as "Head Start," unless otherwise noted), with funding to serve 666,923 children and pregnant women in centers, family homes, and family child care settings in urban, suburban, and rural communities throughout the country. This includes funding provided directly to tribes to operate American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) programs in tribal communities. It also includes funding for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs to provide Head Start services designed to meet the needs of migrant or seasonal farmworker families. Head Start programs promote school readiness by enhancing the cognitive, physical, behavioral, and social-emotional development of children by providing educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services to enrolled children and families. The Head Start Program Performance Standards (Performance Standards) outline the requirements and expectations of programs in delivering services. Head Start programs are expected to collaborate with other early care and education programs in their states and local communities and to work closely with local school systems. All Head Start grant recipients must, unless a waiver is granted, contribute 20 percent of the total cost of the program from non-federal funds or in-kind contributions, including donated goods or services. No more than 15 percent of total program costs may be used for program administration. With the exception of AIAN and MSHS programs, which have specific eligibility criteria established by law, at least 90 percent of the enrollees in a Head Start program must be children from families with an income at or below the federal poverty level or eligible for public assistance or children who are experiencing homelessness or in foster care. However, if a program can show that it is meeting the needs of all interested and eligible families in its community using the above criteria, that program may propose to fill up to 35 percent of its funded enrollment with children whose family income is between 100 to 130 percent of the poverty line. A Head Start program must ensure that at least 10 percent of its actual enrollment is filled by children with disabilities who are eligible for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, unless it is granted a waiver. Following the 2007 reauthorization, ACFC implemented the Designation Renewal System (DRS), which provides a structure for identifying lower performing programs that are required to compete for continued funding, resulting in more open competition. Grant recipients that fall short on quality benchmarks, Administration for Children, Families, and Communities Page 64 including classroom quality, health and safety, financial accountability, and program management standards, are designated for competition. Since FY 2013, appropriations have provided $25 million annually to support the implementation of the DRS in order to minimize the disruption of services to children and families during transitions to new providers when incumbent grant recipients are unsuccessful in the competitive grant process. ACFC has awarded these funds for activities such as hiring, training, and conducting criminal background checks on staff; obtaining licenses to operate; beginning recruitment and enrollment of children; and transferring property and inventory from the incumbent grant recipient. ACFC has also awarded these funds to support the operations of an interim provider until the new grant recipient is in place to avoid gaps in service to children and families. In FY 2025, ACFC continued to provide $8 million to maintain nine Tribal Colleges and Universities Head Start Partnership grants to support activities to improve the skills and qualifications of education personnel, to provide assistance to staff and parents in the program, to develop curricula to promote high- quality services and instruction, and to develop and implement learning opportunities for AIAN Head adjustment, a $2 million increase for the funding of Tribal Colleges and Universities Head Start Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands as a result of the Compacts of As of August 1, 2021, each Head Start center-based preschool program must, unless a waiver is granted, provide 1,020 annual hours of planned class operations over at least eight months per year for 45 percent of its center-based funded enrollment. The requirement that Early Head Start center-based programs provide 1,380 annual hours of planned class operations remains in effect from August 1, 2018. Head Start programs have increased their service duration over time. In FY 2025, approximately 88.5 percent of funded slots in center-based Head Start Preschool programs operated for at least 1,020 hours per year. Starting in FY 2022, and every year since, Congress has included a General Provision to expand funding flexibility for research projects in ACFC. All research funding provided for in the Appropriations Act can remain available for five years following the appropriation. This has allowed for additional time for research and evaluation projects within the Head Start program. Funding for the program - net of any authorized changes, such as transfers or reprogramming, or supplemental appropriations - for five years is as follows: In FY 2025, there were 1,562 Head Start grant recipients, with awards averaging $4 million and ranging Funding for this program is also used to pay salaries and benefits for federal employees, information technology support, grants paneling, and other related administrative costs. Administration for Children, Families, and Communities Page 65 The FY 2027 request for the Head Start program is $12.4 billion, the same as the FY 2026 level. This level will allow ACFC to fund an estimated 634,699 slots for eligible children and pregnant women through an estimated 1,562 Head Start grant recipients, with awards averaging $4 million and ranging The FY 2026 Budget proposed a set of reform principles to refocus the program on its core mission by increasing parental choice; improving health, education, and employment outcomes; enhancing efficiency; and strengthening parental engagement. The FY 2027 Budget builds upon these reform principles and would streamline administrative str

Extracted from Administration for Children, Families, and Communities, p. 10. Verbatim; nothing here is paraphrased.

Contracts funded by this line

111 linked contracts. These are obligations — lifetime awarded money — and they are not comparable to the request above and are never added to it. No total is shown: an award linked to several lines is counted in full on each, so the sum would not be a fact.

Showing 8 of 111 — most confidently matched first, largest within a confidence tier. These are not necessarily the largest 8.

Confidence mix · 111 medium

Linked contracts are a floor, not a census. Coverage is bounded by how distinctively a program is named and, for performer links, to RDT&E and Procurement — O&M and military construction publish no performers. Budget figures are FY2027 request dollars; contract figures are obligations. The two measure different things and must never be summed together.

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