Proposed Head Start Standards Could Complicate Communication for Hispanic Families

The first time Jacqueline Contreras entered the Tulsa Educare lobby, tears rolled down her face. 

Contreras’ autistic son, Alonso, had shut down after his father had to sign a voluntary departure to leave the United States. Contreras had lost all hope. 

“I felt like I had no way out,” Contreras said. “I had no help. (I felt) that I’m going to lose my job and I’m not going to be able to support my family.”

The Early Head Start Program at Tulsa Educare helped bring the family’s spark back. 

Both Alonso and Contreras’ first language is Spanish. In the Head Start program at Tulsa Educare, staff provide instruction and parent communication in both Spanish and English.  The inclusion of Spanish in the program allows Contreras to communicate her concerns and voice her son’s needs. 

“He was spending time with his dad, who is fully Spanish,” Contreras said. “His dad would talk to him and sing to him in Spanish, and he would pay attention. Coming here and obtaining this help in his language is really, really helping him.”

But the future of Spanish instruction for Head Start, a federally funded child development program for low-income families, foster families, children with disabilities and more, is uncertain. If the Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs proposal is finalized, it will require programs to be taught in English only, and if a child doesn’t speak English, the program will be required to prioritize teaching English to the child. 

The proposal, published Aug. 7, says Head Start standards conflict with an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March 2025 that established English as the national language. 

All nontribal languages will be at risk if the proposal is finalized. The proposal states that programs would be required to minimize nonessential multilingual services and redirect resources toward English-language education and assimilation. 

In Oklahoma, more than 300,000 people age five and older speak Spanish as their household language, according to Cherokee Nation Public Health. Although the data doesn’t show the number of speakers younger than five, the age of Head Start attendees, about 24% of those Spanish speakers reside in Tulsa County, which has the second-largest Hispanic population in Oklahoma after Oklahoma County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Melissa Miller, a mental health specialist at Tulsa Educare, said the change could isolate several Spanish-speaking families and cause them to lose the opportunity to be informed about their child’s care. 

“It’s so important for families to feel welcomed and seen and understood,” Miller said. “And so, eliminating that opportunity to be able to engage those families in their home language, it just seems like the opposite of what we’re trying to do, which is build relationships with families, help them feel welcome and empowered as they move on with their children and their education.”

Aracely Juarez, a mother of two who attend the Head Start program at Tulsa Educare, said eliminating Spanish could create a language barrier between parents and children. 

Juarez said she feels supported because she has older children who are bilingual, but it is a concern for her community. 

“It will be really complicated because new families don’t have kids that already understand English,” Juarez said. “When they receive any documents at home, they will be feeling lost because nobody will be there for them to explain it. They don’t have the support that other children who dominate the language do.”

Eliminating other languages in Head Start could also stunt the academic growth of children who speak other languages.

Dual-language learners with a balanced understanding of both English and Spanish often had more Spanish exposure at home and studied with teachers proficient in Spanish, according to a 2023 study published in the academic journal Early Education and Development.

The findings indicate that exposure to home-language-friendly environments does not delay the development of English skills but can support development when paired with instruction in English. 

Juarez said her daughter changed significantly when a Spanish-speaking teacher began teaching in her classroom. She started at Tulsa Educare with only English-speaking teachers, and she was not progressing as fast as other students, Juarez said. 

“She is starting to respond better,” Juarez said. “She’s feeling in the classroom that she’s doing better when the teacher speaks her language we speak at home. She was not using words when she started because the teacher was fully English. But now I noticed that she is starting to talk more, and she is also talking in both languages.”

In Head Start programs that facilitate Spanish instruction, English-speaking children are also exposed to Spanish. Miller said it can benefit children from all backgrounds. 

“We have a lot of bilingual teachers, so maybe they’ll sing a song in English, and then they’ll sing that same song in Spanish,” Miller said. “It’s just really amazing to see English-speaking children and families that come from English-speaking households being able to name the colors and numbers in Spanish as well as English. It’s really amazing the breadth of communication that they learn from being exposed to more than one language.” 

Apart from removing non-English language instruction, the proposal introduces a few new standards. Finalizing it would remove most of the six-decade-old federal standards to shift the burden to the states. 

Public comments were accepted until Oct. 6. Several educators and parents opposed the proposal, concerned it would reduce standardization for Head Start across the United States. 

In Oklahoma, most Head Start programs must be licensed through the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, which establishes minimum criteria and enters the child care facility into Oklahoma’s Quality Rating and Improvement System at a one-star rating until it reaches certain standards to move up through the levels.

In Oklahoma’s system, there is already variation among child care providers, but Oklahoma has baseline protections that don’t exist everywhere, Miller said.

“We have specific accreditations that we have, but we don’t know that every Head Start agency in Oklahoma has the same resources,” Miller said. “And some states do not necessarily have those accreditation agencies, so the quality of the Head Start programs would differ wildly based on what their accreditations are, and if for whatever reason something were to change in Oklahoma, we would not have the requirements of (federal) Head Start (standards) to continue to provide the care that we need.” 

It’s uncertain how long it will take for the proposal to either be finalized or withdrawn. In the meantime, families such as Contreras worry about how changes could affect their children’s future. 

Contreras joined the policy council at Tulsa Educare, an advisory council equipped with translators that allows parents to weigh in on program decisions. She said she worries that if the proposal is finalized, she will lose essential communication in Spanish and the ability to voice her son’s needs in her first language. 

“Every time I have a doubt, I come and I ask and I have known and I have learned that there’s many resources,” Contreras said. “This is so important for me as a Spanish speaker because before coming to Educare, I didn’t know that there was a lot of help for my son. He’s autistic and he’s delayed, so this has been a great help for both of us. Not only for my son, but me as a parent.”

Editor’s Note: Tulsa Educare Family Advocate Pilar Castoe translated some of the reporter’s questions into Spanish and the source’s responses into English. Some quotes attributed to the source reflect Castoe’s English translations.

Raynee Howell is a general assignment reporter for Oklahoma Watch. Reach her at rhowell@oklahomawatch.org

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