This Head Start center teaches in two languages. A Trump overhaul would require one: English

IMMOKALEE, Fla. (AP) — It's almost noon, and after playing on the playground, working with clay and washing their hands, the 2-year-olds are ready for lunch.

The eight children and their Head Start teachers pray in English, thanking God for the meal. Then, the adults bring over several bowls.

“Hoy tenemos arroz." In Spanish, the teacher announces the children are having rice. A little boy grabs a ladle and scoops rice onto his plate.

Both English and Spanish are core to daily life in this Head Start preschool in Immokalee, Florida — an agricultural area about 120 miles (190 km) northwest of Miami. The center serves more than 50 children from mostly Guatemalan families, ages six months to 5 years. Most students arrive speaking little or no English.

Children who speak a language other than English at home account for at least a third of the enrollment in Head Start, a federally funded early childhood program serving roughly 700,000 low-income children and their parents. For decades, Head Start has supported these kids by hiring multilingual teachers to teach them English, while using their home languages as a foundation.

But an overhaul of Head Start’s standards proposed by President Donald Trump's administration would amend that approach.

If finalized, the proposal would require Head Start programs to conduct all education in English, though programs could seek waivers and certain Tribal-language instruction would be exempt.

“A firm foundation in the English language” is critical to preparing kids for school, said the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start.

Toys line shelves in the Immokalee classrooms, labeled in English and Spanish — helicopters, airplanes, tower builders. Bilingual signs show shapes in different colors and list children’s birthdays. Every day, teachers sing and read in both languages.

One afternoon, it suddenly grows dark outside and thunder rolls. Noticing the preschoolers look worried, a teacher explains in English, “When you see it, it’s lightning. When you hear it, it’s thunder. What was it?”

“Thunder,” a boy responds. Another answers in Spanish, noting the danger: “Es muy peligroso."

“Si te cae un rayo muy fuerte, te puedes lastimar," the teacher responds. (If a very strong bolt of lightning hits you, you could get hurt.) Then she adds in English: “So we don’t go outside.”

This is part of Head Start’s Planned Language Approach in action. Educators help children learn English while also using the language they speak at home — not simply as an accommodation, but as a teaching strategy.

Research shows skills and knowledge developed in a child’s home language can provide a foundation for learning English. If a child already knows the word for “yellow” in Spanish, she doesn’t have to completely rediscover the concept behind the color when learning the word in English.

Asked for research supporting the proposed English-only requirement, the Department of Health and Human Services pointed to Trump’s executive order designating English as the country’s official language. “The changes set forth in the proposed Head Start rule help achieve these goals by exposing children to English earlier, during a critical time in children’s development,” a department spokeswoman said.

But education studies don't back up the administration's claim, said Michael López, a child psychologist who has led Head Start studies for the federal government.

“There’s really not any credible research basis that suggests that English-only instruction will produce stronger English academic outcomes,” López said. “It’s a mistake. It’s really going back 30 years.”

Dual-language instruction produces better academic outcomes, he said, including in subjects like mathematics.

In the 1970s, Head Start began requiring centers with significant numbers of non-native English speakers to hire at least one staff member fluent in their home language — a regulation still in place today.

The Trump administration wants to drop that requirement, saying it could help centers more easily staff classrooms.

The language changes are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to eliminate or rewrite many federal Head Start requirements for classroom conditions, curriculum and safety. Instead, state and local regulations — which are often more lenient — would apply.

The proposed changes do not require a vote in Congress, but the administration is required to seek and consider feedback from the public. Thus far, most comments related to the English-only proposal oppose that approach.

At Immokalee, teachers give daily notes to parents when they pick up their children, writing in both English and Spanish.

Beyond these simple reports are monthly parent meetings, plus four in-person parent-teacher conferences every year — two at the children’s homes and two at school. (Those conferences would become optional under the Trump administration proposal.)

In all of these interactions, parents and staff currently speak in Spanish with each other.

The executive director overseeing the Immokalee center said she is unsure what the English-only proposal would mean in practice.

“I don’t know how you’re going to keep people from … speaking Spanish, because it is the home language,” said Isabel Garcia, who, as executive director of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association, supervises 26 Head Start and Early Head Start locations. “It is important that (family members) feel comfortable understanding what is happening with their child.”

HHS told the AP the English-language requirement would apply only to instruction. Head Start teachers could continue using kids’ home languages to explain safety rules or providing comfort, for example — and when communicating and engaging with families, the department said. In fact, the law requires Head Start centers to communicate with parents in a language they understand, “to the extent practicable,” which wouldn't change.

The department acknowledged eliminating requirements for bilingual staffers “may negatively affect communication with non-English speaking families and weaken family engagement."

It suggested using online translation tools.

AP Education Writers Alia Wong and Moriah Balingit contributed reporting.

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A poster shows common shapes labeled in both English and Spanish inside a classroom at a Head Start preschool in Immokalee, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Children play at a Head Start preschool in Immokalee, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A mother picks up her young child from a Head Start preschool in Immokalee, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A teacher escorts young children back to their classroom at a Head Start preschool in Immokalee, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Children look through a book of first words at a Head Start preschool in Immokalee, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) — A former Cornell University student who alleges she was gang raped at a fraternity in 2024 received a text-message apology from one of the brothers soon afterward. After initially saying she didn't see what happened as illegal, she became convinced within weeks that she had been violated, according to a newspaper report citing records from the university's private investigation.

The documents, as described by The New York Times, trace the woman's shift from seeing the alleged encounter as a dismaying embarrassment to seeing it as a sexual assault — one she then reported to campus police, discussed with the university's internal investigators and is pursuing in a lawsuit filed in September. The case has roiled the Ivy League campus and has raised questions about why no criminal case was brought.

According to the Times’ report of records and statements gathered during the inquiry:

The day after the Oct. 19, 2024, party at the Chi Phi fraternity house, the woman got back to her room and told her roommates she'd taken ketamine — a powerful anesthetic sometimes used as a party drug — and had sex with multiple men. The roommates said that at that point, the woman didn't describe the events as rape or assault, but one roommate noted: “I don’t really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred,” the newspaper reported.

The following day, the woman got a text message from one of the men she would later accuse in her sexual assault lawsuit. He texted that he “just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night” and regretted that he and a fellow fraternity brother — also now a defendant in the woman's lawsuit — had been too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

The woman texted back that “at the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal” and that she had liked being with the two men.

But by Oct. 23, 2024, she was growing distraught that word of the episode had spread around campus. Soon, she saw a post in an online forum about campus Greek life that asserted that Chi Phi brothers had gang raped a sophomore and should be reported.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” she later told investigators.

Over the days after that post, her tone became more aggrieved — “how could you let this happen?” — as she kept communicating with the first Chi Phi brother who'd texted her after the party. Still, she planned to attend the fraternity's Halloween Party, until she was disinvited.

On Nov. 3, 2024, she texted the man: “let’s be clear that 90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” saying she'd been given a lot of ketamine. While her memories were patchy, they included a humiliating, drug-laced sexual act, she wrote.

“I know that i told u i felt uncomfortable and i didn’t know anyone in the room,” she added.

She went to Cornell campus police five days later and spoke to them again on Nov. 14 and 15, 2024, telling them: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” according to a report by CBS New York, which said it obtained a transcript of her police interview.

Cornell's student government planned a public forum Thursday on sexual violence to allow students to demand “institutional accountability" and talk about their own experiences on campus.

Cornell has said it suspended the Chi Phi fraternity indefinitely and disciplined or expelled some students, but the university has declined to provide specifics, citing student privacy rules.

The local district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, declined at the time to bring any criminal charges, but this week said he would reopen the investigation based on new information in the woman’s lawsuit, which identifies her only by the pseudonym Jane Doe.

He has maintained the woman’s first account to police didn’t include allegations that she was drugged against her will, incapacitated beyond the ability to consent, or forced into sex. After CBS News this week revealed details from the police interview transcript, he told the network he'd never seen her detailed account and had relied instead on a statement written by a campus police officer and signed by the accuser.

She's suing seven men who she said participated in the assault, as well as the university, the fraternity, and others.

Lawyers for two of the men she is suing have denied they participated in a sexual assault. One said his client hadn't touched the woman or engaged in any drug use. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach the other men or their representatives have been unsuccessful.

Under pressure from the public and politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, the private university agreed Wednesday to bring in outside lawyers to independently investigate how it handled the woman’s allegations.

Students walk across the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Students walk across the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Shown is the the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)