WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today said that a provision to postpone restrictive regulations on transporting children enrolled in the Head Start program was included in legislation that passed the Senate and the House early Saturday morning. Grassley and Senator Tom Harkin were instrumental in ensuring the provision was cleared by the House and Senate leadership.
The rule that would have gone into effect if not for this extension would have required Head Start programs to use specifically designed and equipped busses instead of partnering with existing transportation options like paratransit. Paratransit is used extensively in Iowa and other rural states.
“The restrictive regulations made sense to well-intentioned Washington Bureaucrats, but are completely impractical in the real world. I hope now we’ll be able to impart a little common sense in these regulations,” Grassley said. “Rural states like Iowa need flexibility in transporting children or we’re going to have children who won’t be able to attend the Head Start program.”
The Head Start reauthorization of 1992 required the Department of Health and Human Services to enact regulations for transporting children to and from Head Start programs. The final regulations were released in the last days of the Clinton Administration and were scheduled to go into effect by January 2006. Because of the difficulty Head Start programs experienced implementing the regulations; they were postponed until Head Start was reauthorized. At this time, Head Start has yet to be reauthorized, so an additional extension was necessary.