HHS final rule removes wage and benefit requirements for Head Start staff set in 2024, effective January 15

A final federal rule removes requirements on staff wages and benefits that Head Start programs were due to meet under a 2024 rule. The Administration for Children and Families, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, filed it for public inspection on November 13. It is scheduled to appear in the Federal Register on November 16 and takes effect on January 15, 2027, according to the Federal Register's records of the document.

According to the rule's summary, the agency is removing requirements on wages and benefits that it believes do not fit the plain language of the Head Start Act and are "costly and overly prescriptive" for programs and staff. It estimates more than $2 billion in future cost savings for programs. The May proposal would have removed all of the 2024 wage and benefit standards; the summary does not say whether the final version differs. The full text is due on govinfo with the November 16 issue, so this account draws on that summary and on the proposal.

What the 2024 rule required

The 2024 rule, published in August of that year, gave programs until August 1, 2031, to meet four wage standards: a pay scale for all staff, pay for education staff comparable to that of public preschool teachers, a salary for every staff member that covers basic living costs, and comparable pay across Head Start Preschool and Early Head Start. By August 1, 2028, programs were to give full-time staff health coverage, paid leave and behavioral health services, help part-time staff get health coverage, and help eligible staff reach child care subsidies and student loan forgiveness, the May proposal says.

When it adopted those standards, the agency estimated their cost at about $1.2 billion for wages and $877 million for benefits by the time they were fully in place in 2031, according to the proposal.

Why the agency proposed dropping them

In its May proposal, the agency argued that the Head Start Act caps staff pay at average local rates, treats the federal minimum wage as the floor, and only tells HHS to "encourage" salary scales, not require them. It said the 2024 rule had read "in excess of" in the statute to mean "not less than."

The proposal also put a number on the trade-off. Without more money from Congress, it estimated, programs would have had to cut about 106,000 funded slots to meet the 2024 standards: roughly 84,000 in Head Start Preschool and 22,000 in Early Head Start. It added that underenrollment had fallen to about 8% nationally in 2025, from 13% cited in the 2024 rule, and classroom teacher turnover to 17% from 19%.

The case for the 2024 standards

The 2024 rule made the opposite argument. It said the share of Head Start preschool teachers with a bachelor's degree rose from 52% in 2010 to 68% in 2023, while their inflation-adjusted salary rose by less than 1%, from $41,389 to $41,691. Turnover across all staff positions was 17% in 2023, up from 13.5% in 2019, and 19% among teachers, it said.

Stronger workforce supports are necessary to meet the purpose of the Act of promoting school readiness for low-income children.

What happens next

January 15 falls 60 days after publication, by our count, which is the timing the proposal had planned. In May, the agency said it was not proposing at that time to undo other parts of the 2024 rule, but it invited comments on changes it might revisit in a future proposal. In August, it went further and proposed to rescind and replace the Head Start Program Performance Standards, last revised in 2024; comments on that proposal closed on October 6, according to the Federal Register's record of it. Our explainer on how a federal rule is made describes the steps from proposal to final rule.