Dive Brief:
- The small number of Head Start programs operating under interim management in recent years faced challenges from low student enrollment, unqualified staff and unsafe facilities, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Monday.
- Programs under interim management were also not monitored for fiscal management of grant funds or assessed for classroom quality by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Head Start, GAO found.
- The government watchdog agency is recommending that HHS formally monitor Head Start programs that are under interim management, including obtaining assurance that all child health and safety incidents are reported.
Dive Insight:
Just a handful of Head Start programs — 18 out of 1,600 — operated under interim management in September 2024. Since 2000, about 200 programs have had temporary management, according to GAO.
Interim management of Head Start programs can occur when a community loses its Head Start provider and needs temporary management to avoid disruptions to services. Indeed, the National Head Start Association, which represents program grantees and participating children and families, said in reacting to the GAO findings that interim management "only occurs in extreme and highly volatile circumstances and is meant to be a temporary, emergency intervention."
GAO found that missed monitoring and assessments of these programs had notable impacts, including that less than half of their nearly 4,000 available classroom seats were filled during the 2022-23 school year. Interviews with staff at three programs under interim management raised a variety of concerns such as mold, wasteful spending and shortages of diapers.
The federally funded Head Start program, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, serves infants, toddlers and preschool children, and provides prenatal services through Early Head Start, for families with low incomes. In fiscal year 2023, the program's $11.5 billion budget aimed to reach 778,420 children and pregnant people in centers and through home-based programs, according to OHS. The same fiscal year, Head Start programs employed and contracted with 250,000 staff.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg, R-Mich., said in a statement Tuesday that he was "disturbed" by the details in the report. "Head Start programs are supposed to provide support to our country’s neediest children — instead, we continue to find that Head Start programs endanger the safety and wellbeing of the children for which these programs are meant to help," Walberg said.
Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, said in a statement Thursday, that interim management is "an unfortunate, but necessary component of Head Start’s extensive and unparalleled oversight system.
"In addition to taking seriously the findings and recommendations the GAO proposed, we urge the Office of Head Start to make it a requirement that they communicate with the appropriate congressional representatives anytime a program is placed in interim management," said Vinci. "This way, they can work with Congress and the community to ensure that every child Head Start serves has access to a safe and healthy environment where they can develop, grow, and reach their fullest potential.”
GAO sent a draft of the report to HHS, which responded in December before the Biden administration ended. Now that the federal government has transitioned to the Trump administration, it's unclear how HHS will approach GAO's recommendations.
In a response to the draft, Biden's HHS department said it agreed with most of GAO's recommendations, including conducting formal monitoring of programs under interim management for 12 months and assessing programs under interim management for three years. It also agreed to ensure compliance with child safety incident reporting requirements, and to add a customized review of fiscal activities to its onsite monitoring protocol.
HHS noted that programs spent an average of 12 to 18 months under interim management, and said it was rare for programs to be under interim management for three or more years. GAO's research found that over the past six school years, about half of the programs previously or still under interim management through March 2024 had been so for at least 18 months. A third had been under interim management for at least 24 months.
