Head Start offers a model for ending preschool pushout. Don’t weaken it.

On Aug. 6, Philadelphia City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas held an Education Committee hearing on the crisis of preschool suspensions and expulsions, examining their devastating impact on families and possible policy solutions to this discriminatory practice, which research has shown is rife with racism and ableism.

Ironically, on that same day, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans for sweeping deregulation of Head Start, including rescinding its current regulations that prohibit expulsion and severely limit suspensions in all Head Start programs.

At the advocacy organization where I serve as policy director, Education Law Center-PA, we help hundreds of families every year who are navigating preschool pushout. That includes families whose children — yes, even toddlers as young as 18 months old — have been suspended or expelled from preschool.

This shocking practice is common: Preschools suspend children at a rate three times higher than K-12 schools.

Suspensions and expulsions of our youngest learners, which are harmful to a child’s development and can profoundly impact their future, disproportionately harm Black and brown children, children with disabilities or developmental delays, and children sharing those identities.

Myriad preschool programs exist in Philadelphia and across the commonwealth, which can make it difficult to untangle how each program is regulated and which agency oversees it. This patchwork can also make it difficult for families to understand which protections apply to their children. The clearest safeguards exist when protections, in conjunction with legal requirements, are explicitly codified in preschool program regulations.

Head Start programs offer the strongest protections for our youngest learners, but in Philadelphia, those regulations only apply to 170 Head Start locations, a fraction of the city’s total early childcare settings.

Current Head Start policy, which Kennedy now seeks to rescind, prohibits the expulsion of students in its programs and severely restricts suspensions to extraordinary circumstances, with a host of steps that must be taken before any temporary exclusion.

During the recent City Council hearing, one of the most important policy suggestions offered by ELC-PA’s attorney, Rose Wehrman, included implementing the existing Head Start policy for all of the city’s preschool programs. It’s a policy that, if implemented with fidelity, could have afforded important protections for many families featured in our April report on preschool pushout.

Jennifer Garrison’s 4-year-old son, Terrell, is a constant source of joy for everyone around him. Garrison described him to members of City Council as “loving, gentle, and full of energy.” But Terrell, who is Black and has autism, was denied the most basic needs in his preschool and was effectively excluded from his program under conditions that would not have been permissible under Head Start’s regulations.

To hear Garrison talk about the juxtaposition of who Terrell is compared with how he was treated is gutting — and unfortunately too common.

Had Terrell been in a program with the protections explicitly outlined by Head Start’s now-in-jeopardy regulation prohibiting such exclusion, perhaps he and his family would not have endured such a traumatic experience. We don’t know that for sure, but we do know that Head Start’s policy is one that should be expanded to more programs.

The benefits of Head Start are comprehensive: The National Head Start Association outlines academic, social-emotional, and physical health benefits, and notes that the impacts are “particularly strong” among underserved students. This is, in part, due to strong policies around developmentally inappropriate practices like suspension and expulsion.

But Secretary Kennedy, in the name of “parental empowerment” and even “freedom,” wants to upend the foundations of a decades-long program with lifelong benefits, ranging from increased educational success through K-12 and beyond, as well as physical, emotional, and financial health.

In addition to the rescission of the suspension and expulsion policy, Kennedy’s proposed rule changes would deregulate nearly every other facet of Head Start. This includes appropriate staffing ratios, developmental screenings, and a host of regulations that are central to the program.

Fortunately, these proposals are not final, and people can submit public comments (of any length or format) to the Department of Health and Human Services by Oct. 6 to oppose the deregulation of Head Start.

The existing federal regulations are the ones we should emulate right here in Philadelphia and across the commonwealth. We urge our fellow community members to join us by submitting comments opposing the gutting of Head Start regulations, which would destabilize this foundational program.

Meanwhile, our organization will continue to work to support families and expand the existing Head Start policies to include all programs educating our youngest learners across Philadelphia and the entire commonwealth.

Hillary Linardopoulos is the policy director for the Education Law Center-PA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring equal access to a quality public education for all children in Pennsylvania.