The Head Start Policy Council is the parent body every Head Start agency must have: parents of currently enrolled children are proportionately represented on it, and program staff may not serve on it except parents who occasionally substitute as staff (45 CFR 1301.3).
Directors work with it because federal rules give it a shared approval — written personnel policies need both the policy council's and the governing body's approval — plus a role in setting the guidelines within which parent committees take part in recruiting and screening employees.
What is the Head Start Policy Council?
The policy council is a required governance body, not an advisory gesture: every Head Start agency must have one, and at the delegate level the same rules speak of a policy committee (45 CFR 1301.3).
The Office of Head Start administers the Head Start Program Performance Standards these requirements come from.
Who sits there is defined by the same rule.
Parents of currently enrolled children must be proportionately represented on the council, and program staff may not serve — with one carve-out for parents who occasionally substitute as staff (45 CFR 1301.3(a)-(b)).
For a director, that defines the room: across the table sit parents of enrolled children, not your staff team.
Terms are short and repeat.
Members serve one-year terms and must stand for re-election to serve again, and the council's bylaws must spell out how many one-year terms a person may serve, not to exceed five terms (45 CFR 1301.3(d)).
Seats therefore come up on an annual rhythm, and a director's governance calendar runs on the same clock.
Governance is one slice of the Head Start director's job.
The head start director overview covers the whole role — the qualification line, the duties and where governance fits in the wider job.
What does the policy council approve, including on hiring?
The clearest approval duty is personnel policy.
Head Start programs must establish written personnel policies and procedures approved by both the governing body and the policy council, and make them available to all staff (45 CFR 1302.90(a)).
In practice, the policy framework your whole staff team works under — discipline, leave, evaluation — carries both bodies' approval: it is not final until each has given it.
On hiring, the rule this page draws on gives parent committees the participation role: they participate in the recruitment and screening of Head Start employees, within guidelines set by the governing body and the policy council (45 CFR 1301.4(b)(3)).
The practical read for a director is that parent involvement in your hiring is not freeform — parent committees take part within guidelines the two bodies set.
The research behind this page did not establish any broader policy council approval over individual hires; confirm that with the Office of Head Start.
One adjacent rule completes the picture: programs must consider current and former Head Start parents for job vacancies they apply for and are qualified for (45 CFR 1302.90(b)(6)).
Parent participation in staffing is written into the system, not bolted on.
Shared-governance rules are in flux
How directors prepare for policy council meetings
The sourced rules set the frame a director prepares around: the composition rules — proportionate parent representation, and staff excluded except occasional substitutes — define who can hold a seat (45 CFR 1301.3(a)-(b)), while one-year terms with re-election, and bylaws that set how many terms a person may serve — not to exceed five — decide how often seats come up (45 CFR 1301.3(d)).
From there, preparation is management craft.
Track when each member's one-year term ends and leave room for re-election before the seat is unexpectedly empty.
When personnel policies need updating, take the same draft text to both approval bodies rather than maintaining parallel versions, and once both have approved, keep the current text available to all staff (45 CFR 1302.90(a)).
When a vacancy opens, revisit the guidelines the governing body and policy council set for parent committees' part in recruitment and screening before interviews begin (45 CFR 1301.4(b)(3)).
If you are interviewing for a Head Start director job, treat this as a working topic, not a formality.
A question about how you would walk a personnel-policy change through both bodies, or how you would bring a parent committee into a hire within the guidelines they set, maps onto the same working relationship this page describes.
Governing board vs policy council
In the rules this page draws on, the two bodies act as a pair on the same items: written personnel policies and procedures need approval from both the governing body and the policy council (45 CFR 1302.90(a)), and the guidelines within which parent committees take part in recruiting and screening employees are set by both (45 CFR 1301.4(b)(3)).
For the policy council, who holds the seats is fixed by rule: parents of currently enrolled children, proportionately represented, with program staff barred except parents who occasionally substitute as staff (45 CFR 1301.3(a)-(b)).
It is the parent-facing half of shared approvals.
How governing bodies themselves are composed, and what else they must do, was not part of the research behind this page — those requirements sit alongside the policy council rules in the Head Start Program Performance Standards.
Confirm the details with the Office of Head Start.
Career and employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Head Start rules change — confirm current shared-governance requirements with the Office of Head Start.