Administration for Children and Families August 13, 2019 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In this NPRM, we propose changes to two of the seven conditions of the Designation Renewal System for Head Start Grantees (DRS): The condition related to the Classroom Assessment Scoring System: Pre-K (CLASS) and the fiscal condition related to audit findings. For the CLASS condition, we propose to remove the lowest 10 percent criterion and set more rigorous minimum thresholds across all three domains that grantees must meet in order to avoid competition. For the fiscal condition, we propose to add a second criterion that would consider additional findings from annual audits. A grantee would be required to compete for continued funding if they met either criterion. We also propose technical changes within part 1304 subpart B (Designation Renewal) to remove any outdated provisions to the regulation. These technical fixes were not included in the publication of the Head Start Program Performance Standards (performance standards) final rule in 2016 because the Designation Renewal section of the regulation was not open for amendment in the revision of the performance standards.