Head Start director job description template (duties, qualifications, schedule)

Every section of a Head Start director posting does one job: help a director who has run a federally funded program recognize the seat, and help one who has not screen themselves out.

Before you write any of it, decide which seat you are posting.

The federal qualification rule at 45 CFR 1302.91 covers the Head Start director, the fiscal officer, the content-area managers (family, health, disabilities, education) and teaching staff — but it names no center-level "site supervisor" or "center director" position, so those center-level titles and their requirements are set by each grantee and, where the site is licensed, by state licensing.

A grantee-wide program director, a center-level director inside a larger grantee, and an education manager are three different postings.

Key duties and responsibilities

Start from what the job actually is.

BLS lists the director's duties as supervising teachers and childcare workers, hiring and training staff, providing professional development, setting and communicating policies, developing educational programs, meeting with parents and staff about progress, and preparing budgets — and draws the accountability line that makes a Head Start posting different: at independently owned centers the director follows the owner's guidelines, at chains the parent organization's standards, and Head Start directors follow HHS requirements.

Write the duties so a candidate can see the federal accountability in them, not just the management tasks.

Then add the work a private-center posting never carries.

Governance: the Policy Council approves program personnel policies and decisions about the employment of program staff and submits them to the governing body, and the governing body approves the personnel policies covering hiring, evaluation, compensation and termination of the Head Start Director and equivalent positions — your director prepares the materials those tables review and works within the approvals they make.

Instructional leadership: the standards require a research-based coordinated coaching strategy that assesses all education staff and offers intensive coaching — observation, feedback and modeling — to those the assessment identifies, and the director is the one who keeps it staffed and running.

Compliance: qualification and background-check files, training records, monitoring visits and — where your grant also holds one — your state child care license.

Close the duties with the seat's actual span at your grantee: how many sites and classrooms, which managers report to the seat (education, family services, health, disabilities), whether a fiscal officer or the director owns the budget lines, and the family-facing work — recruitment, enrollment, parent committees — the seat represents.

A candidate should finish the duties list knowing whether they are leading a program or a site inside one.

Minimum and preferred qualifications

Lead with the federal floor, in its own words: current Head Start rules require a director hired after November 7, 2016 to hold at least a bachelor's degree plus experience in staff supervision, fiscal management and administration (45 CFR 1302.91(b)).

Screen the four components separately in your process — the degree, then documented experience in each of the three areas — because a resume that shows one rarely shows all four.

Whatever your grantee adds on top, the posting should never promise less than the rule requires or demand more than your program can defend.

One caveat belongs right next to that line, because the rule is under active revision: on August 7, 2026, ACF proposed rescinding and replacing the Head Start Program Performance Standards, and under the proposal Head Start would keep only the statutory staff qualifications and drop the regulatory ones — including the director's.

The bachelor's rule is current law as of October 2026 and subject to a pending proposal, so post the qualification the rule sets today and confirm the current requirement with the Office of Head Start before you hire.

If the seat you are actually hiring is an education manager or coordinator, the qualification line changes: that seat needs a bachelor's or advanced degree in early childhood education, or a bachelor's or advanced degree plus equivalent ECE coursework and early education teaching experience, under Head Start Act section 648A.

Post it as its own job description with its own line — folding an education manager seat into a director posting mismeasures both candidates.

The same logic runs through the other named seats: fiscal officers hired after November 7, 2016 must be CPAs or hold at least a bachelor's in accounting, business, fiscal management or a related field, and family, health and disabilities managers need at least a bachelor's.

Add the layers the federal rule doesn't carry.

Where your grant also holds a state child care license, your state's director requirements are a separate layer enforced by your state child care licensing agency — phrase the line as "meets [State]'s child care licensing director requirements, where applicable" and confirm them with the agency before you post.

And state the background-check conditions in the words your program uses: before hiring, an interview, reference checks, a sex offender registry check and either a state or tribal or an FBI fingerprint check; the remaining fingerprint check plus the child abuse and neglect state registry check (where available) within 90 days after hire; no unsupervised access to children until the full process is complete; and a complete recheck at least every five years.

Confirm before you post: the qualification floor and background-check sequence above are federal rule text under active rulemaking, your state's layer is set by your state child care licensing agency, and both can change.

Verify the current requirements with the Office of Head Start and your state agency before the posting goes up.

Physical requirements and schedule

Describe the physical work as the director seat's own essential functions: regular presence across classrooms, playgrounds and facility spaces while the program is open, observation time spent down at the children's level, and travel between sites in a multi-site grantee.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, physical requirements in a job description should describe those essential functions, and the EEOC requires accommodation for applicants with disabilities unless it causes the employer significant difficulty or expense.

One line to leave out: a lifting weight written as a legal threshold.

No federal rule sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs, and no national licensing standard does either — a "must lift [X] pounds" figure in your posting is your program's own practice, so if you state a number, present it as what the seat itself demands.

A second accommodation law reaches the same line: employers with 15 or more employees are covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — effective June 27, 2023, with the EEOC's regulation effective June 18, 2024 — which requires reasonable accommodation of known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions.

The schedule section sets expectations a director offer can live with.

BLS describes most preschool and childcare center directors as working full time, some more than 40 hours a week, on site while the center is open and sometimes working early mornings and late evenings, with directors and assistant directors staggering schedules in larger centers so someone is always on site.

Add what is true at your grantee: core hours, evening governing body and Policy Council meetings, and how on-site coverage is shared.

The more precisely the posted schedule matches the one you run, the fewer offers come apart on it later.

How to write the pay and benefits line

Write a range, not a shrug. "Competitive salary" and "depends on experience" hand the decision back to the candidate with nothing to decide on; a range with a real floor and a real top lets a director tell in seconds whether the seat fits the career they have.

State what moves a candidate up your range: the number of sites and staff the seat supervises, years leading a federally funded program, an advanced degree, or fiscal and governance experience beyond the floor.

Benchmark the range before you write it, and label the benchmark.

BLS does not break Head Start out of the administrator occupation, so no wage figure should be read as Head Start director pay.

The occupation that fits the seat is education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare (SOC 11-9031): in BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey for May 2025, that occupation earned a U.S. median of $59,300 a year ($28.51 an hour) across all industries, with the 10th percentile at $38,580 and the 90th at $98,240, and a middle 50 percent — 25th to 75th percentile — of $47,040 to $75,500 in annual pay.

These are national figures spanning every industry that employs these administrators, not an offer for your market; the Head Start director salary tables carry the state-level numbers behind the series.

For how to position an offer against the school districts and nonprofits you actually compete with, that work lives in our guide to how to hire a Head Start director.

In eight states, the pay line is not optional for covered employers. Our research verified pay-disclosure laws in eight states, each attached to the job posting itself and set in the state's own law:

• California — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting (Labor Code 432.3).
• Colorado — the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires employers to disclose compensation in all job postings and notices, internal and public, including benefits information.
• New York — Labor Law 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers.
• Washington — employers with 15 or more employees must disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each job posting (RCW 49.58.110).
• Illinois — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)).
• Minnesota — employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota must include a good-faith salary range in job postings (Minn. Stat. 181.173).
• Massachusetts — since October 29, 2025, employers with 25 or more employees must disclose wage ranges in job postings.
• Vermont — employers with five or more employees must include the compensation or range of compensation in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening.

Secondary trackers report more states adding posting rules, including some with 2026 and 2027 effective dates; our research did not confirm those against the state sources, so treat any state outside the eight above as unconfirmed and check before you post without a range.

Some of the eight also reach the benefits line — Washington asks for a general description of benefits, Illinois for pay scale and benefits, and Colorado's disclosure covers benefits information — so write the benefits section of your template before you post, not after. Confirm before you post: pay-disclosure laws carry their own definitions and employer-size thresholds — Colorado's applies regardless of employer size — and they change, so check the current rule with the state agency that administers it before the posting goes up.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

The template can be airtight and the wording around it can still cost you candidates.

Check each of these before the posting goes live.

• Wording that signals a protected-trait preference. Under the laws the EEOC enforces, a job ad that shows a preference based on a protected trait is illegal — the EEOC's own examples are an ad seeking "females" or "recent college graduates," which may discourage men and people over 40 from applying. Director postings that reach for "young and energetic" or cue a preferred gender for the seat are exactly that pattern. Describe the job — the program, the duties, the governance, the schedule — and leave age, sex and every other protected trait out of the ad.
• No pay line. In California, Colorado, New York, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont, the law makes pay disclosure — and, in Washington, Illinois and Colorado at least, the benefits description — part of what a covered employer's posting must carry; every state but Colorado covers only employers at or above its own size threshold. Elsewhere, and below those thresholds, an empty pay line asks directors to apply blind, while the posting next to yours that states one lets them self-sort on the spot.
• A lifting threshold written as a legal rule. No federal rule or national licensing standard sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs; a number in your posting is your program's own practice. State the seat's actual demands instead, and keep the ADA's accommodation obligation in view — and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act's, for employers with 15 or more employees.
• One posting for two seats. The federal rule names qualifications for the program director, the fiscal officer, the content-area managers and teaching staff — not for a center-level director inside a larger grantee. If you are hiring an education manager or a center-level director, post that seat with its own title and its own qualification line; a program-director template asks the wrong screening questions and pushes the right candidates away.
• A private-center template pasted onto a federal seat. A generic childcare-director job description carries the owner's-guidelines accountability of a private center — it has no line for Policy Council and governing body approvals, the federal qualification floor, or the Head Start background-check sequence, and a Head Start candidate reads the gaps immediately.
• Requirement inflation. The federal floor is a bachelor's plus experience in staff supervision, fiscal management and administration. Demanding an advanced degree or prior Head Start director experience when your program does not actually require it removes qualified candidates the rule itself would clear; put genuine preferences under "preferred" and leave the minimums at what the rule and your grantee policy set.
• Vague duties. "Proven leader wanted" describes every applicant in the pool. The duties list — governance materials, coaching strategy, compliance calendar, the managers who report to the seat — is what lets a candidate tell whether they have already run this job.
• Titles nobody types. Candidates search "Head Start director," not internal level names or branding inventions. If the seat is an education manager or a center-level director, say so in the title — the program structure belongs in the body, where it reads as information rather than doing the title's job.

After you post, run the search like a live process.

Answer every application, including the declines — a posting that goes quiet teaches candidates to skip your next one — and refresh or re-post when a listing ages.

Read your own ad from the other side before it goes up: browse Head Start director jobs to see how it reads next to the postings around it, and compare your wording against childcare job ad examples that already pull applicants.

From there the work is screening and interviewing, and the full process — the governance calendar, the qualification screen, the checks, the pay and the terms that keep a director — is our guide to how to hire a Head Start director.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Head Start qualification and background-check rules are administered by the Office of Head Start, pay-disclosure rules by the state agencies named, and state licensing director requirements by your state child care licensing agency — confirm the current rules with each before you post.