Office of Head Start FY25 Monitoring Kickoff

Office of Head Start FY25 Monitoring Kickoff

Glenna Davis: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fiscal year '25, or FY25, Monitoring Kickoff webcast. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Adia Brown. Adia, the floor is yours. 

Adia Brown: Thanks, Glenna. Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? It's Adia Brown here. I'm the monitoring lead here at the Office of Head Start, and I am happy to be here on this Friday with you guys. We are doing the monitoring kickoff today, and we have lots to talk about. There's so many things that we need to do today. We want to give you an overview. We want to talk about what's going on in monitoring, and we want to make sure that you get some helpful resources at the end.

The first thing that I want to tell you is the question that you always ask, “Are we going to get the slides?” You are. If you look in the chat, there should be the slides. They will be there. My team is going to post those slides several times in the chat box for you guys, and you're absolutely going to get the slides for this presentation. But with that, I want to turn it over. We have lots of wonderful people here from the Office of Head Start today so that we can talk to you about all things monitoring, and the first person is our wonderful leader, Dr. Khari Garvin. Khari, take it away.

Dr. Khari Garvin: Well, Adia, thank you so much, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the fiscal year 2025 monitoring season kickoff. Anytime our Head Start community comes together, I just love it, and today is no exception as we begin another monitoring year. And I want to extend my gratitude to each of you, our Head Start leaders, educators, partners, for the dedication that you bring to your work nurturing the development of children and families and transforming communities across the country. 

This year, we have a few important updates to share, and I'm excited to announce that alongside our traditional monitoring priorities, we'll be introducing some major highlights of the recently updated Head Start Program Performance Standards. Now, these updates represent a significant step for supporting our commitment to quality, stability, and growth within the Head Start programs. And as many of you know, these new standards were crafted to further elevate Head Start support for children and families, especially those furthest from opportunity. 

Our goal here today is to ensure that you're properly equipped with a clear understanding of what lies ahead so you can plan confidently for a successful year. Before we get started, I want to thank the Office of Head Start team for their hard work in aligning our monitoring processes with these updated standards. And I also want to say as clearly as I can that most changes in the updated Performance Standards will not be monitored this year. 

These include standards with compliance dates after this year and brand - new standards that we haven't monitored on before. Again, our goal is to give programs sufficient time to thoughtfully prepare, and as part of that, we've made some strategic decisions on pacing for compliance and implementation timelines, which we'll be covering in brief today.

This is your chance to hear directly from our experts to learn about the content of and process for the Office of Head Start's monitoring events this year, including how the updated standards will impact monitoring this year and to submit any questions that you may have about this exciting new chapter for Head Start. Once again, thank you for being here and for your unswerving dedication to America's youngest children and their families. Let's make this monitoring season an opportunity for learning and for growth and for excellence. Without further ado, I'd like to invite back Adia to tell us about what is in store for FY25 monitoring. Adia?

Adia: Hey. Thanks, Khari. That was awesome. Let’s get into it. The first question that many people always have is, “When is monitoring going to start?” This year, we're starting a little later than we normally do. Normally we're already in the thick of things, but as Khari said, we’ve updated the Head Start performance standards. We've done a lot of things. We wanted to give you some time to really get invested in that. Now, we're going to start our monitoring season for FA 1s or Focus Area 1s and Focus Area 2s on December the 16th of this year. We're getting started a little late, but we're going to get in there, and we're going to have our monitoring reviews from December all the way through the summer.

Class has already started, class started October the 7th, and we've been doing it for some time. We are doing it via video. We're doing it on site, and for AIAN programs, we have a process called self - review, those have been going on. RAN reviews, they also are continuous, and they go throughout the program year. A lot of people always ask, “When will I know when my monitoring review is going to happen?” We skipped a slide here somewhere, but there was a slide that really tells you that our monitoring reviews happen. You get a letter. You've already gotten a global letter to let you know that you are going to get a monitoring review.

In 45 days before your review, we typically send the letter to you to let you know that this is the date of your monitoring review. That happens for 90% of our programs. There's another 10% of programs who get what's called an unannounced review. One question that I get asked very frequently is, are we doing unannounced reviews this year? And we will be, in FY25, doing unannounced reviews. Let's go to the next slide. There's a few exciting things that we want to tell you right here, and people have asked us lots of questions about, which version of CLASS are we using? For this current year, we're going to continue to use the CLASS 2008 version. 

In FY26, or our next monitoring season, that's when we're going to start using the CLASS second edition. This is actually going to be our final year of using the CLASS 2008 edition, and then, FY26, we're going to use the new one. Folks, we also have a PI that just came out to talk about the increase in instructional support. We were scheduled to increase instructional support from 2.3 to 2.5 on August 1st, 2025. However, there's been a direct final rule that has been released that is going to allow us to delay that increase for instructional support until August the 1st, 2027. 

If you have more questions about that, the PI is listed on the slides that you just received, and somebody on my team may be putting that PI into the chat so you can click on that directly and find out more. Here is the slide that I was looking for earlier, and I already talked about it. This talks about your 45 - day letter, and it talks about the fact that if you haven't filled out your availability calendar, that is super important. 

One thing that we need all grantees who are going to be monitored to do is fill out your availability calendar. It lets us know if you're going to a conference, if different things are happening in your program, and we try to use that calendar to make sure that we visit you on a time when you're actually there. Please, if you haven't done that, use the link that's in this slide to update your calendar, and make sure that if you have changes throughout the program year that you continue to update it so that as we schedule your reviews, we can be aligned with what you have planned in your program year?

What’s new in FY25? Well, Khari talked a lot about the fact that we have a lot of new Head Start Performance Standards, or we have updates to our Performance Standards. He also made it very clear that if the standards are new that we won't be reviewing them this year. If they also have time frames that go ... That are later on come ... They come into play for years down the road, we also won't be reviewing them. 

However, there are some standards where we clarify things like child incidents and reporting or standards of conduct where we incorporated flexibility, flexibility around ERSEA for AIAN and Migrant Seasonal or where we address things like temporary suspension, and I have a lot of team members from the Office of Head Start that will tell you more about those updates or flexibilities that we will be looking at during this monitoring year. We may have people who are new in the monitoring season this year, we wanted to let you know what are some of the reviews that we do.

Some of the main reviews that we do are called Focus Area 1 that we call FA1, and that review is a review that we do within the first 18 to 24 months of your 5 - year grant cycle. For an FA1 review, this is a completely virtual review. We have a reviewer who calls you, and they talk to you about your ... the things that you plan to do. We want to understand your approach. What are you going to do? What are some of your goals for the program? How do you plan to implement and execute things? We also assess some compliance items during that review, and we identify any needs and trends that you may have during that foundational review. 

The second type of review that we do is called a Focus Area 2, and this review is a review that we've been doing for a long time. If you've been around for a while, it used to be called the Triangle Review. It has had many different names. But the Focus Area 2 review is a review that we do completely on - site. Now, when COVID was in play, we did do parts of this review as a hybrid, and we did some of it off - site. We had the fiscal person off - site last year.

This year, we're bringing everybody back on - site to the program, so everybody will be there, the health reviewer, education reviewer, fiscal reviewer. Everyone will be at your program, and it is a completely on - site review. During that review, we're going to be understanding the quality. 

Here is your opportunity to demonstrate all the wonderful things that you do in your program. We're looking to hear from you. We're looking for you to show us. We're going out to visit classroom. We're visiting your sites. We're talking to managers. We're looking at all of your data. We want to understand everything that you're actually doing in the program and how you have implemented all the plans that you talked about in the FA1 review. 

We're also listening for something called strong practices. We not only want to find out about compliance in your agency, but we want to find out about the things you're doing really well, and strong practices are the way that we look for those things. We also are going to be assessing compliance. That's the major thing that we do during the monitoring review, and we want to understand all the things that you are doing that you're doing really well and that you have in compliance and some things where you may need some improvement or where you need to make some corrections.

We do all of that in the Focus Area 2. Let's talk a little bit about the monitoring content. What is it that we monitor during both the Focus Area 1 and the Focus Area 2 reviews? There are six areas that we monitor during both of those reviews. We look at program design management. We look at education, health services, family and community engagement, fiscal infrastructure and eligibility, selection, enrollment and attendance. 

These are the six sections, and we're going to talk a little bit about each of them during this presentation. Let's start off with program design and management. During this part of the review, we really are looking to hear about how you manage the program, and one of the things that we think is really important in understanding that management is your program data. We want to know how you use it.

We want to know how you use it for continuous improvement, how you use it for training staff, how you use it to make sure that you're meeting your program goals and objectives. When you're in the thick of things and you're doing either the F1 or F2 review, it's really important for you to have your program data ready and for you to be able to talk about how you're using it in your program. We're also looking for the ways that you supervise and support your staff. We want to know how you supervise them, how you support them, how you get them ready to do all the things that you know that you need to do to implement and have a fabulous Head Start program. 

We also want to know some important things about how you adhere to the standards of conduct and how you report incidents. All of these things happen during the PDM section, and we're going to come in and ask you about those things in both the Focus Area 1 and the Focus Area 2 reviews. With that, I'm going to ask one of my colleagues from the Office of Head Start to come in and talk to you about one of our updates to the Head Start Performance Standards. Jess, where are you? We'd love to have you tell us about one of the updates. 

Jessica Bialecki: Great. Thanks so much, Adia. My name is Jess Bialecki. I'm the director of the Policy and Planning Division here at the Office of Head Start. I'm really glad to be here with all of you today. As Director Garvin and Adia mentioned, most changes in the updated Performance Standards will not be monitored in FY25. These include standards that have compliant states after this year and any brand - new standards that we haven't monitored on before. Now, there are some standards, as was mentioned, in the updated Performance Standards that represent requirements that existed before this final rule. 

And in the updated standards, we either clarified these requirements, or maybe we codified requirements that already existed through statute or law. We will continue to monitor these requirements, though we have updated the language in some instances to be clearer about our expectations. As an example, as you likely know, standards of conduct and incident reporting are not new to the Head Start Program Performance Standards, but in updating our standards, we did update the language to be clearer about our expectations. Like always, we will still monitor on these standards, on the standards of conduct and the reporting standards for the upcoming program year.

But we've aligned the language in the monitoring process with the updated standards, and we're doing that using that language from the updated standards to help minimize confusion between the two. On the screen up here, you see the updated standards of conduct in 1302.90(c), which align the requirements for the standards of conduct related to the maltreatment and endangerment of children with four major categories of child maltreatment. Again, you can see those on the screen. Now, we'll talk about this and incident reporting in great depth in the follow - up RAN information in the webinar that will be coming up. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Adia. 

Adia: Hey. Thanks, Jess. I really appreciate it. You’ve got that update. We're going to be doing that all throughout the presentation. You're going to be hearing from my friends and colleagues from the Office of Head Start. We're going to give you updates as we go along, be paying attention. And if this is your area, your section, take some notes down. You're going to get the PowerPoint presentation, but there's nothing like hearing directly from the Office of Head Start on all these really important items. 

Let’s talk a little bit about program governance. Program governance, we're going to be monitoring that again this year, and there are some things that we are going to be looking for in your program. How are you establishing your governing bodies? How are you training them? We want to know that when we come out, be prepared to talk about those things. We also want to hear from those governing bodies, how do they provide ongoing oversight of your program, their partners? They're really important in the work that you do, and we want to know, how do they do their responsibilities?

How do they help you to provide that ongoing oversight, super important? One of the things that programs sometimes have some difficulty in is making sure that their governing bodies are getting lots of data and information and most importantly making sure that they understand them. 

As you're working with your policy councils or you working with your governing bodies and you're giving them things like, let's say, budget reports or financial reports, you want to make sure that those folks really understand that data and that they can talk to it not only for monitoring purposes, but also so that they can help you with the oversight and the leadership of your program, super important. Let's talk a little bit about ERSEA. ERSEA is always important to us, and everybody knows that we want to make sure that you're enrolling children. One of the things that we look at, we have a whole system for making sure that programs are fully enrolled.

We don't look at that during monitoring. What we do look at during monitoring is we look at the data that you send to the Office of Head Start to tell us how many children are enrolled in your program. We actually do a little data check there to make sure that data is accurate. Please make sure when we come on site that you have all the information about how many children are in your program and you're able to show us that the numbers that you normally send to the Office of Head Start match the numbers that are in your system. 

We want to make sure that we can see that. The other thing that we really focus on when we come out to do monitoring reviews is we think ... We look at the eligibility requirements. We look at the requirements to make sure that every child that's in your program is there because they're eligible to be so.

Now, there's lots of different ways to get children into the program. We have many different things that we've done to try to make sure that eligibility is flexible and that you can get the kids who need it into your programs. There'll be folks who talk about ... A little bit more about those flexibilities in the next few minutes. But we check to make sure that you've done that stuff all right. One of the things that we also do is, we look to see whether or not you are enrolling children who meet the 10% ... Who are in the 10% of disabilities category. 

Now, we do that at certain ... Now, we are starting in December, this means that we're almost at the midpoint. When we get the programs in January, this is when we'll start to check to see whether or not you have actually met that requirement, and it's really important. Last year, we looked at the data. There were lots of people who maybe only had 1% or 2%.

We really want you to be thinking about that, working on it and making sure that you're out there recruiting and selecting children who do fall into that category. We want to make sure that Head Start is as inclusive as possible. We want to make sure that programs are doing that. When we come out to monitor you, we're going to be looking for that. I'm actually going to go back to Jess, and she's going to tell you about the flexibility, some of the flexibilities that we have for eligibility. Jess? 

Jessica: Adia, glad to be back. The changes to the Performance Standards related to income calculations and eligibility include both changes to the definition of income as well as a flexibility that's new to adjust for excessive housing costs when making income eligibility determinations for Head Start services. First, as you see in the screen, the updated definition of income really seeks to provide clarity and make it less burdensome to implement. We've adjusted accordingly since we're just making a clarification in this instance. 

Now, something we're really excited about is that the updated Performance Standards allow programs to adjust for excessive housing costs when making income eligibility determinations. In short, if a family spends more than 30% of their total gross income on housing costs, their total gross income can be reduced by the amount spent on housing costs that exceed 30% of their income. There's more resources out there on the Head Start website under the updated Performance Standards section on how to implement this new flexibility.

But since this is an area where the updated standards give programs more flexibility than previous requirements, and we really want to make sure that programs are able to fully utilize these new flexibilities as they would like to. We are adjusting our monitoring protocol in FY25 to account for them. Monitoring will account for programs that choose to begin to deduct excessive housing costs from a family's income when determining eligibility for services. This is a flexibility that programs could start taking advantage of as soon as we published that final rule back in August. Programs do not have to begin implementing it, but they can choose to, and we want to account for that in our monitoring this year. 

Now, additionally, as I mentioned before, there are some standards in the updated Performance Standards in which we codified requirements that already existed through statute or law. This includes a set of changes to the eligibility standards specifically for American Indian and Alaskan Native Head Start programs and Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs.

These changes to law were passed with the final FY24 budget, which means that those changes were actually effective immediately when the budget was signed in March of 2024. But we've updated them now in the Performance Standards when we release the updated standards in August. We've actually already made adjustments to our monitoring protocols to account for these eligibility changes, again, just for specifically our Tribal Head Start and our Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs. For Tribal Head Start programs, they may now determine any pregnant person or age - eligible child who is in the service area to be eligible for Head Start Service, Tribal Head Start services, regardless of income. 

And additionally, through their selection criteria, the law emphasizes that Tribal programs may give priority to members of an Indian tribe who would benefit from the Head Start program. Because of these significant changes to the eligibility policy and law, eligibility file reviews will not be conducted in Tribal Head Start programs in FY25. Now, for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs, with these changes to law, children and pregnant people are eligible for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start services if at least one family member's income comes primarily from agricultural employment. That removes additional family income requirements that were previously in place.

The intention is to make it easier for families to access needed Migrant and Seasonal Head Start services. One other change with the updated standards was a clarification ... Or this is more of a clarification than a change, clarification of the eligibility period for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs. Once a child under three and their family is deemed eligible for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start services, they remain eligible until the age of three, ensuring consistent access to the program without the need for reverification. Of course, as with the other clarifications, we will align ... We have aligned our FY25 monitoring protocols accordingly. Adia, I'll hand it back to you. 

Adia: Thanks, Jess. We're going to keep going, and I see in the chat people are like, "Adia, slow down." Did you guys not know that they nicknamed me Miss Quick? That is my nickname. The other thing is that we are not even halfway through this presentation, you'll see that I have folks who come in ... On. 

They talk about the update to the Performance Standards, and they kind of slow down to make sure that you understand that, and I have to kind of keep going so that we can get through the presentation. There was a note in the box that said, "Are we going to get a copy of this? Will we see the video?" And right after we leave here, we post it. You can see me do this over and over again, OK? I'm going to slow down a little bit but not that much because I want to make sure that you get everything that we have to offer. Let's talk about education and child development services. There are some things that we are ... That we do.

We're going to do a lot of things in this section. One is that we want to understand how you use your curriculum, how you use your assessment tool and how you use all of those tools to understand how children are developing and progressing in your in your program. This is another area where you want to make sure that you have all of your documentation and your data available so the team can see it and they can understand, what do you do in the FA 2? In the FA 1, we want to understand, how are you going to do it? That's the difference between those two things. 

We also are really interested in individualized instruction. We're interested in how you use the data to individualize for children, how you actually train your teachers to do that, how you make the curriculum work for all the individual children in your program, and these are some of the things that we look for when we come to your program. We talk to teachers. We talk to your management team. We also go out and visit the classroom so we can see how this is actually working in real time in your programs.

We're always excited to see how you're doing and how education really works in the program. Next slide, please. The other thing that we look at is we look for whether or not your education staff have appropriate qualifications. Now, this is one where folks have many questions about, and we are going to have a more in - depth training about teacher qualifications for you. This is an area where we come in and we really want to know, are you meeting the standards in this area? Do people have professional development plans? 

There's a lot of ways that we actually work with the programs to understand how they have qualified teachers, but this is really an important factor for us both in the FA1 and FA2 reviews. We want you to be thinking about it, and also, they'll be training to help you understand how to show us who has which qualifications in your program. We're also looking to see whether or not you use a research - based coaching strategy. We think coaching is a wonderful addition to the Head Start Performance Standards.

We know that when teachers get coaching that they do much better and that they grow and learn, and they develop in their professional development over the time that they spend in your program. When we come out and we do monitoring reviews and we talk to you in FA1 reviews, we really want to know about your coaching strategies and how they're working for the teachers that you work for in your program. We also are ... We really think that health and mental health are super important. One of the things that we're going to be looking for in your program is whether or not you have great partnerships with mental health consultants. 

We also want to know a little bit about expulsion and suspension, and we're looking to see how you support families with mental health and their social and emotional well - being. But I'm not the best person to talk to you about this, I'm going to invite one of my friends to come on and give you some of the clarifications and flexibilities that we've put into the Head Start Performance Standards around mental health and suspension. Sangeeta, where are you?

Sangeeta Parikshak: Hi, Adia. I'm glad to be your friend and colleague on this wonderful webinar. I'm just glad to be here with many of our friends on the call today to talk about health and mental health. I'm Sangeeta Parikshak. I lead the mental health and behavioral health work for the Office of Head Start. For mental health consultation and prohibiting or severely limiting suspension and expulsion, they're not new to the Head Start Program Performance Standards. As Jess mentioned, through the final rule process, we did update the language to be clearer about our expectations as well as to provide some flexibilities. 

We’ve now clarified what mental health consultation should be used for and who can provide mental health consultation services. We align our description of mental health consultation with the definition commonly used by SAMHSA, which is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Specifically, we explained that the role of the mental health consultant is to build the capacity of adults in a child's life, not to provide therapy directly for the child.

We have moved away from a focus of observations of children and built out in the standards the types of consultation services that can be provided by a mental health consultant to really align with the model of mental health consultation and what was initially intended. This includes doing any of the following, including consulting at the program level, consulting with any staff who work with children and families and consulting with families directly. Regarding who can provide mental health consultation, we've added the flexibility that a mental health consultant can either be licensed themselves or working under the supervision of a licensed mental health professional. 

This flexibility is really in response to the growing concern that is ... It is difficult to find a licensed mental health provider, and programs can and should avail themselves of students in training or other mental health professionals who have a supervisor who is licensed. Programs must also continue to use mental health consultants with knowledge of and experience in serving young children and their families, which is not new, but that is also part of what is in the requirements. Under changes to suspension and expulsion, we include a definition to clarify what ACF considers as a suspension. 

Now, this definition should also not be new for you all. It aligns with the Department of Education, the Office of Special Education Program specifically. It also aligns with what we have been saying through training and technical assistance for quite some time, but now we say specifically that suspension means the temporary removal of a child from the learning setting due to a child's behavior, including requiring the child to cease attendance for a specified period of time, reducing the number of days or amount of time that a child may attend and removing the child from the regular group setting for an extended period of time or requiring the parent or the parents designated to pick up a child for reasons other than illness or injury. 

We are not talking in this area of suspension for children who have some of these accommodations in their IEP or ISSP. We also clarify what is meant by reasonable modifications for when a temporary suspension can be used. We still say, and this is not new, that a temporary suspension must be used only as a last resort in extraordinary circumstances where there is a serious safety threat that has not been reduced or eliminated. We now say ... It used to say, "By reasonable modifications." We've got lots of questions. 

“What do you mean by Reasonable modifications?" We've added interventions and supports recommended by the mental health consultant, and the program needs time to put additional appropriate services in place to clarify what a program should be doing during the time a temporary suspension is happening. We also clarified that if that temporary suspension is really deemed necessary, a program must do everything they can to help the child return to full participation in all program activities as quickly as possible.

We've now added the same language that is in the expulsion section to the suspension section, exploring all possible steps and documenting all steps taken to address the behavior and supports needed to facilitate the child's re - entry safely and continued participation in the program. I want to emphasize that all of these additions are not new, in the sense that they're not new practice. But they are new in the sense that we've really tried hard to clarify what we mean by some of this language. I also want to make sure that we know that there are no changes to expulsion. In 1302.17(b), the change is only under suspension. 

Like always, we will still monitor on these standards for the upcoming program year, but we will align language in the monitoring process with the updated standards in suspension specifically, and we will use the language from the updated standards and monitoring to help minimize confusion. In the next slide here, we talk a little bit about some of the changes to the mental health and health standards that we are not monitoring on, but we have added some data questions so we can better understand how programs are accomplishing helping families navigate the health and mental health systems, how they are connecting with community resources and supports and how they are preventing lead exposure at the facility.

Under Family Support Services for Health, Nutrition and Mental Health, which is 1302.46(b)(2), a program must provide ongoing support to assist parents' navigation through both health and mental health systems. We've always had health systems. Now, we're adding mental health systems to meet the general health and specifically identified needs of their children. We've added mental health to the standard and includes providing information about how to access mental health services for young children and their families including referrals if appropriate. Just a data point, really trying to understand how programs are helping families do this. 

Under 1302.40(b), we've changed the title of Health Advisory Committee to Health and Mental Health Services Advisory Committee. Like in past years, the Office of Head Start will confirm that the program has an active committee in place comprised of a range of local health providers based on program need. A program has always had the opportunity to add a mental health professional to the committee. But now this focus on mental health as part of health has just been elevated in the title. This data question will really allow us to see the different constellation of providers programs have utilized to meet their program need around community supports for health and mental health.

In FY25, OHS will not be monitoring on whether the committee is assisting the program to address the mental health needs of children and families in the Head Start program. Finally, preventing lead exposure, super important, 1302.47(b)(10), preventing lead exposure programs must develop a plan to prevent children from being exposed to lead in water. 

You can see the full description here on the slide. I just want to emphasize that OHS will include a data collection question to understand how grant recipients are preventing exposure to lead in water and paint. However, OHS will not issue findings based on the updated language of the standard in FY25. We have developed resources related to testing your facilities' drinking water for lead and step to take if there is lead in the drinking water, and we will put it here in the chat for you. It's already up on the ECLKC. And I'm going to turn it back over to you, Adia. 

Adia: Thanks, Sangeeta. That was wonderful. Let’s keep going. We're going to talk about health services, child health and nutrition. These are the things that we are going to be monitoring. We’re going to be ... In a minute, I'm going to go through, and I'm going to slow down for a spotlight for you guys. We're going to be talking about whether or not you get health determinations, vision and hearing screenings. We're going to talk about how you support families to make sure that you're meeting their child's health needs. 

We want to make sure that you have a Health Services Advisory Committee, we still are going to monitor whether or not you have a committee, but as Sangeeta said, we're not going to really focus a lot on whether or not you're utilizing that committee for mental health support. And we're going to monitor still child nutrition needs. Let's go to the next slide, and I'm going to slow down.

You're going to watch me slow down, which is not something that I normally do. When I slow down, you know it's super important. I'm going to slow down here because this is a place where programs often have findings. They run into trouble here. I'm going to slow down because I want to do this spotlight on child health status. I like to think about this as a waterfall. There's a little bit of a waterfall that happens here with this standard. 

First part of the waterfall is that, within 30 days, we expect that Head Start grantees will work with families to ensure that they have an ongoing source of healthcare, that they have health insurance and that they really know where they're going to be getting their continuous health care for their child in the program, super important. Got to start there because if the parent doesn't already have that, if they don't know how to ... where the doctor is or how to get to the doctor or how to access that, you may have some difficulties with the very next part or the very next standard that you need to meet. 

First thing is first. We are checking during monitoring to see whether or not you're helping programs in their first 30 days. Think about whether or not they have an ongoing source of continuous and accessible healthcare. Simultaneously, as that is going on, in the first 90 days, we want to make sure that every child who's coming to your program for the first ... In the first 90 days since the first day that the day have attended, that they have obtained a health determination from a healthcare provider based on wellness visits and exams and the EPSDT of the state to understand if the child is up to date or not on a primary and preventative medical and oral health care. 

First 30 days, does everybody have access to healthcare? As that's going on in the first 90 days, do we know what the status is based on a wellness exam, an EPSD? Do we know whether or not children are or are not up to date? And during those 90 days, you should be helping families get that determination.

Then, finally, the last part of the waterfall is for children who are not up to date, who they're not up to date on their wellness visits, who they're not up to date on their EPSDT, we want to start working with families. We've already been working with them, but we want to continue to work with the families to make sure that, as quickly as possible, we help those children get up to date. As I said when I first started this very slow spotlight, this is an area where programs consistently run into problems, and one of the issues is that some programs don't keep records of the very first thing. 

They keep the records of whether or not the child is up to date or not, but they don't keep the records of when they found out the determination of whether or not they were up to date. You may want to go back and work with your health managers and your health teams, to make sure that your data includes that piece of information. You need the information to say we determined what the health status was in these first 90 days, and you also need the information that is related to whether or not each child is up to date or not, super important.

We're going to have some webinars about this later on to help really dig into this a little bit more, but I wanted to slow down here because I know that this is a place where folks struggle sometimes. Let's go on to the next slide. There's some other things that we look at in health services, and one of the things that we look at is whether or not you have policies and procedures to ensure health and safety, super important. We want everybody in the program to know, how do you keep kids safe? The next thing is criminal background checks. 

This is another area where we have a lot of findings, and I'm going to do a spotlight on that in a second, too. We also are going to look at whether or not your indoor and outdoor learning environments are safe. Let's go to the spotlight. The next spotlight that we're doing a closer look on is, it's also another thing that has timing. People often get a little bit confused about this one, I'm going to do this one a little slower, too. There's a few things that you have to do as it relates to criminal background checks. There's things that you have to do prior to hire. Before the person is hired in your program, you have to know whether or not there is a criminal history with a fingerprint check.

It can either be from the state, tribal or FBI criminal history, it can be one of those three, okay, and ... But prior to hire. You have to know if there is a sex offender registry check. Any available including the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center National Sex Offender Registry. Pior to hire, you have to get the criminal background history with fingerprints from either the state, tribal or federal. You don't have to get all three yet, just one. You have to get the sex offender registry check. 

Now, after you do that, the person is hired into the program. Within 90 days of them being hired, you can do the remainder of things. Now, they're hired. Everything is great. You have 90 days to do a child abuse and neglect state registry check and a criminal history with fingerprint check of whichever one of the things you didn't do the first time. Let's say the first time prior to hire, you got the state one with fingerprints. OK. That's good. In 90 ... After 90 days, you can now go and get the federal one, OK? You can get that one next. You can get the federal one with the fingerprint check, but you had ... But prior to hire, you have to have one, and then within 90 days, you have to get the next one, OK?

 I want to make sure ... There'll be more webinars and more training on doing this, but I slowed down here because this is one that people often get confused about. And then every 5 years, you get to do this all over again for everybody. Let's keep going. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about health to expectant families. We have a lot of information, and I'm actually going to bring on another one of my colleagues to talk about this. Megan, are you here?

Megan Anteparra: Yes, I am. Thank you. Thank you, Adia. My name is Megan Anteparra. I am a health specialist working within Comprehensive Services Training and Technical Assistance Division, and I'm going to outline some of the updates relating to expectant families. 

Prenatal and postpartum education clarifies topics that must be addressed through the prenatal and postpartum information, education and services including fetal development; the importance of nutrition in the prenatal and postpartum stage, including breastfeeding; the risks of alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and the benefits of substance use treatment; labor and delivery; postpartum recovery; and infant care and safe sleep practices. The newborn visit clarifies topics that must be discussed during the newborn visit, including, at a minimum, maternal mental and physical health, safe sleep, infant health and support for basic needs. I will turn it back to you, Adia. Thank you. 

Adia: Thanks, Megan. The next section that we look at in monitoring is family and community engagement, one of my favorites, and this is because you get to ... We get to understand how you do two - way communication with families, how you partner with them, how you get your community partners engaged. But you know what? I have another special guest, and she's going to tell you about some new updates, and that is Kiersten. Kiersten, are you here?

Kiersten Beigel: Hello. Happy Friday, everyone. My name is Kiersten Beigel. I am the lead for Parent, Family and Community Engagement at the office. I have the pleasure of talking with you about an update related to engagement with families. These updates here relate to the way that we communicate across the key touchpoints we have with families. The purpose of these updates is really to ensure we are making Head Start accessible, really, from beginning to end or from enrollment to transition. More specifically here on the slide, we want to highlight updates that occur in the recruitment and enrollment section as well as in the family engagement section of the regulations. 

For example, you see here on the slide that to make Head Start enrollment processes as easy as we can by using technology and reducing burden and individualizing for families with more user - friendly options. We want to ensure that communication methods are accessible so that families can engage with their children in ... As well as possible, and also, we want to make sure that the communications we have with families in Family and Community Engagement Services are in formats that families can access and understand and use. We know that, while these are updates, we know that programs are engaged in this and have been doing a lot of these things. 

Whether your program is ensuring that your recruitment and enrollment materials are in languages other than English based on your community, or you're providing some of your processes using some assistive technology for families who need it, or you have web-based applications for families who are more likely to apply through online mechanisms, these are all examples. But these standards are really about helping us sharpen our focus on ensuring that families have access to our services, that they are able to enroll with less burden to stay with us, and of course, ultimately, we want to be able to increase enrollment and to make sure families stay. That is this update alert on modernizing engagement with families. 

Adia: Thanks, Kiersten. Well, we are coming down the home stretch. The last section that we talk about and that we monitor is fiscal infrastructure, super important. We want to know about your budget. We want to know how your budget aligns with your program goals. We provide you ... You guys all fill out your funding application. You decide what you want to do with your programs, and we want to know when we come on to monitor you, how does that budget really help you get to where you want to go? We also want to understand your automated accounting systems. 

It's super important for Head Start programs to make sure that they're spending the money properly, and when we come out to do the fiscal review, we want to know how your automated accounting system helps you to do that. Internal controls is also super important. We want to make sure that there's no fraud, waste or abuse in your program. Head Start is an important program, and lots of folks from all over the country have their eyes on us.

We want to make sure that we're on the up and up and that we have the internal controls to make sure that the funds are spent in really good ways. Want to make sure that all your costs are allowable, which is super important, and we want to make sure that when you make purchases that you do them all in the right way. Fiscal, we're going to have the fiscal reviewer back on site this year. They're going to be looking at facilities and equipment, and we want to make sure that you're prepared, make sure that your CFO and all the people who work in fiscal are ready to answer all the important questions that we have about fiscal. 

Let's go to the next slide. We're coming down to the wire. Now, you guys may wonder, "Oh, gosh, Adia. You talk so fast," but I knew that this was going to go by fast. We have 10 minutes left. We only have 10 minutes left, and in those 10 minutes I'm going to be like your morning cup of Joe. I'm on espresso myself right now. This is going to be like an espresso express train ride through our resources and our events. We have a lot of resources for you.

We want to make sure that you really understand what it is that you need to do during monitoring this year. And because of that, we have already ... If you go to ECLKC, we already have the protocols posted for you. This webinar will be posted with that resource, you can go there right now and find the FY25 protocols. These are the protocols that we are going to start using on December the 16th. Those protocols are there. You can start asking questions about them. You can start talking with your staff and your managers about them. They are on the website for you, you can go and look at those protocols. 

We also have available for you something called the At - a - Glance resource. Each one of those At - a - Glance resources tells you about one of the sections that I talked about today: health, education, all of those different things. And we encourage every program to use those tools because those tools are very informative in helping you understand all the things that we do during the monitoring review. It tells you who you're going to talk to, what they're going to talk about, what kind of documents we look for. Please, please use those At - a - Glance documents. They are super - duper helpful.

 Let's go to the next slide. We changed the format a little bit this year to the monitoring report because we wanted to make sure that everything was super - duper clear for you guys. We want to make sure that you understand the areas of your program that are compliant. We think it's super important for programs, their boards, their parents, all the people that they work for, and because of all the hard work that you do to understand, what in my program is compliant?

We added new charts at each one of the content area levels, so you know which area is actually compliant. We also retain areas of concern. Everybody gets worried about areas of concern. Areas of concern are our way to give you feedback about your program. We don't want programs to be in a position where they're noncompliant or would they have deficiencies, and one of the ways that we do that is we give you these pieces of information called areas of concern that really help you to kind of get on top of things before they get to a place where they're not really working for you the way that you want them to. 

Areas of concern are just like a little warning light for you. It's almost like when you have a check - oil light come on in your car. It doesn't mean your car is broke down. It doesn't mean that it's going to stop right now on the road, but it means that it's something that you really need to take a look at, and we want to give you that information so that you can start the improvements on your own. Those are also included in reports. We have areas of noncompliance. When that happens, we are telling you we need you to correct this, and we give you a time frame in order to do that.

If you don't correct an area of noncompliance, it moves up. It elevates to a deficiency. We don't want that to happen for programs. When you see that you have an area of noncompliance, start working with your program specialists. Start asking for training and technical assistance. This is the time for you to actually start making the correction within that time frame so that your findings don't elevate. We don't want that to happen to programs, and we try to give you notice and enough time to fix them when you get them. 

Lastly, we have deficiencies. Deficiencies, they are things that are either systemic, meaning that this is something that happens in your program that has a systemic nature. It's something that's going on. Maybe it's something that's going wrong with your training, or maybe you don't have policies and procedures that people understand. Things that are systemic happen in that way. It doesn't have anything to do with frequency. A lot of times, people think that systemic means that you did this over and over again, and that's not what it means. It means that there's some part of your system that isn't working, and therefore it's causing other problems in your program. 

A deficiency can be systemic, but it can also be substantial, meaning that this is something that we think is so dangerous or that it's so egregious that if it happens one time, it can be a deficiency. A lot of people often come back, and they say, "Well, it wasn't systemic. How did I wind up getting a deficiency?" It can be systemic or substantial, and I want to make sure that people really understand that that's how deficiencies work, and we will have those in the reports if it happens to you. I hope it doesn't. Then finally, we have strong practices. 

Each report, if you had them, we want to identify for programs, what are you doing that is a super strong practice? We want you to keep doing that. We've identified a bunch of strong practices that we have sort of correlated with the fact that if you do the strong practice, other things in your program are probably going well, too. You will see in the report that we have strong practices, and that is really an update on sort of what we changed in the monitoring reports. 

We hope that you like it, and we want to get feedback from you during the year about if these little nuances that we did really help you understand what's in the report a little better. Finally, let's go to the next slide. Where are all these resources for you? Lots of these resources are located on ECLKC. If you go to ECLKC, like I said, you'll be able to find protocols. You'll be able to find this webinar. You'll be able to find these slides. We make sure that those things are available to you there. Let's go to the next slide. 

We also have retained the Virtual Expo. Overwhelmingly, the Head Start community has said that the Virtual Expo is super helpful to you. This is a place that you can go to about monitoring, and you can find everything. You can find the tip sheets. You can find the protocols. You can find this video. You can find slides. You can find all kinds of things in this one - stop shop that is specifically about monitoring where you can go, and you can get all the information that you need.

Please utilize the Virtual Expo. We try to make sure that everything that you need is there about class, about the Focus Area 1, about the Focus Area 2. Everything you need is in that one place. Go there. Check it out. Finally, we do have an opportunity. We know that this went by really fast, and as you said, "Adia, slow down. Slow down. You go too fast." I have to because, look, we're at the end of time. But we know that this goes by fast and that you want to really dig into some of these topics. 

On December the 4th, we're going to be doing a deep dive into the Focus Area 1. Come join us. As a matter of fact, that's the day after my birthday, so we can all eat cake together. December the 10th, we're going to be talking about eligibility, recruitment and selection and family and community engagement. Come join us there. We want to make sure that you understand this and that you're ready for your monitoring use.

On December the 11th, we're going to talk about program design management and fiscal infrastructure. If you have any questions, come to that training. We want to make sure that you get that information. On December the 12th, we're going to have a deep dive on child development and health services. These links will be up for you shortly. You can look for them. We're going to put them up, and you can register and come to any of those trainings and get a deeper understanding of any of these topics. I know that this 1 hour is super - fast. I know that it goes by fast, and you want us to slow down, and you want to hear everything. 

Play this tape again, but also come to any of these workshops so that you can learn more. OK? Come to any of these work so you can learn more. I know that the whole while that I was talking that my team has been answering your questions that you put into the chat. We can't get to all of them. After this webinar is over, we will go back and look at all the questions that you have put into the question - and - answer section, and we will put up an FAQ that matches your questions. We're going to answer your frequently asked questions.

We're going to put that up as well. It will be on ECLKC, and it will also be in the Virtual Expo. I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for being here, for spending the time with us, for hanging out and for getting ready for the monitoring season. I also want to thank my colleagues from the Office of Head Start, Kiersten and Sangeeta and Jess and Khari and everybody who came on to make this an exciting and wonderful event. 

Monitoring can sometimes be scary and overwhelming, but we ... I love it. Everybody knows me as the monitoring queen and the monitoring guru, and I love monitoring, and I want you to love it, too. It's your opportunity to learn. It's your opportunity to do better, and it's your opportunity to shine and show us just how wonderful and all the great and fantastic things you do to make sure that the children and the families in our American community are getting the best that we have to offer. I want to thank you so much for that, and I want you to go on and have a great long weekend and go team.