Ex-Head Start Policy Director Pans Proposed Deregulation

by Thomas Breen

DeLauro to Bialecki: “I applaud you for leaving.”

Jess Bialecki spent a year and a half working as the director of policy and planning for the federal Office of Head Start.

It was a dream job for the New Haven native — one where she could help set the national direction for a six-decade-old anti-poverty program that provides early learning, health, and parent-engagement services for low-income families across the country. (Head Start also has roots in New Haven, having been designed by the late Yale professor Ed Zigler.)

Bialecki began her tenure as Head Start’s policy director in December 2023, when Joe Biden was still president.

She left the job in August 2025, after Donald Trump had returned to power and had appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as the secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).

During the first half of 2025, Bialecki found herself confronted with a dilemma facing many civil service workers in the federal government during Trump’s second term as president: Should they stay and try to mitigate the harms of leadership bent on defunding the agencies they helm? Or should they leave and not be complicit with the wreckage sought by their new bosses?

Bialecki decided to leave, and now works as the director of early childhood education for the nonprofit Social Impact Partners for Connecticut.

“By the time I chose to leave HHS last summer, I had reached a red line,” Bialecki said on Wednesday morning during a press conference held at the Friends Center for Children’s new early education hub on Dixwell Avenue.

“I did not want to advance a policy direction that I believed was undermining the core mission and the legal mandate of the Head Start program.”

Bialecki was one of a half-dozen speakers at Wednesday’s presser, which was convened by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and focused on a Head Start rule change newly proposed by the Trump administration.

The proposal would remove a vast majority of Head Start’s existing federal regulations in a stated effort to reduce the program’s costs, cut red tape, increase the number of children it serves, and send control to the states.

Speakers at Wednesday’s presser — including Bialecki, DeLauro, Friends Center for Children Executive Director Allyx Schiavone, and Child Care for CT Director Eva Bermudez Zimmerman — warned that this proposal will do much more harm then good.

They cautioned that the sweeping deregulation proposal — which would, for example, increase class sizes and require English-language-only instruction — will significantly harm a program that has been a lifeline for tens of millions of children and their families since 1965.

“This proposed rule would remove or weaken federal requirements around staff qualifications and supports, coaching, mental health, family services, developmental screening, program duration, staff-to-child ratios,” and so much more, Bialecki said.

“The entire state of Connecticut should be very alarmed,” said state Office of Early Childhood Education Deputy Commissioner David Morgan.

The public comment period for the proposed rule change is open through Oct. 6. Each speaker on Wednesday urged members of the public to write in and make their voices heard in opposition to this proposal.

During her time at the mic, Bialecki also spoke about how this topic is “especially personal for me” because of her recent stint leading policy for Head Start at the federal level.

A Wilbur Cross and Yale graduate, Bialecki spoke with pride about leading the team responsible for writing the last major revisions to the Head Start Program Performance Standards, in 2024. She said those changes sought, among other goals, to achieve pay parity for Head Start teachers and preschool teachers.

“The rule now being proposed by HHS moves in the exact opposite direction” of where she sought to lead Head Start during her time as director of policy and planning.

“Based upon what I saw firsthand every day at HHS, I know that this proposed rule is not a good faith effort to reduce paperwork or make Head Start better,” Bialecki said. “By last August, it had become abundantly clear to me that HHS leadership was single-mindedly focused on driving down the cost of Head Start, no matter the cost to children and families.”

She said the Trump administration proposal would see a $668 million annual drop in spending on Head Start staff, as well as 66 fewer hours of Head Start preschool for students and a “massive reduction in coaching.”

She also noted that Connecticut has 22 Head Start programs that serve 5,600 children, including more than 1,000 children with identified disabilities, more than 400 experiencing homelessness, and more than 3,000 dual-language learners.

“Their math is not about eliminating paperwork,” Bialecki said about this rule change. “It’s about spending less on people and services.”

She and DeLauro also contended that the rule change, if approved, would almost certainly be challenged in court. Bialecki said that, when Congress last reauthorized Head Start in 2007, it directed the health secretary to not reduce the “quality, scope, or type of services children are required to receive” through this program. She said the current proposal would do exactly that.

Bialecki later told the Independent that it was “incredibly difficult” leaving her job at the federal Office of Head Start last year. But, she said, “everything was about everything except” helping children — with so much energy instead focused on immigration, DEI, and cutting costs.

“I applaud you for leaving,” DeLauro told Bialecki on Wednesday. “I wish there were more leaving in droves to say, ‘We’re not going down this road in any of these agencies.’”

“It is hideous,” DeLauro continued in her critique of the Trump administration and this proposed rule change for Head Start. “There’s a cruelty that underlies their public policy choices that has to be examined.”

In a separate email press release sent out Thursday morning, New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney and Norwalk State Sen. and Majority Leader Bob Duff, both Democrats, wrote, “The Trump regime wants to strip away more than 90 percent of the standards that make Head Start work, from limits on class size to the requirement that young children be supervised at all times. Its own analysis shows the ‘savings’ come from fewer teachers, bigger classes, and fewer health screenings for the poorest kids in the country. In Connecticut, 22 programs serving nearly 5,000 children are at risk. This is inhumane, and it’s how you kill a program without having the courage to vote on it.” They called on Connecticut Republicans to join them in “demanding that this rule be withdrawn before public comment closes on October 6.”

Bialecki (right), with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Second from left) and the Friends Center’s Miriam Sutton and Allyx Schiavone.

Child Care for CT Director Eva Bermudez Zimmerman: “The Trump administration is throwing a tantrum.”

On display at Wednesday’s presser.