Head Start

In fiscal year 1995, Head Start--the centerpiece of federal early childhood programs--was appropriated $3.5 billion to provide a range of service to preschool-aged children from poor families. Today, about 1,400 local agencies, known as grantees, sponsor these programs and serve 752,000 children. Local programs provide education, nutrition, health, and social services to low-income children and opportunities for parental involvement and enrichment. Since 1990, Congress has boosted Head Start funding by 135 percent to enable more children to participate and to improve the quality of services. However, some Head Start grantees, as expected, did not spend all of the funds awarded to them each year and carried this unspent money forward for use in subsequent years. This report discusses (1) the amount of Head State funding unspent by program grantees at the end of budget years 1992, 1993, and 1994 and the reasons for these unspent funds; (2) the proportion of carryover funds that was added to grantee awards or that offset grantee awards in subsequent years; (3) the proportion of carryover funds that are one or more grantee budget years old; and (4) the grantees' intended use of carryover funds.

GAO found that: (1) about two-thirds of the grantees reviewed had unspent balances of $69,000 to $177,000 during budget years 1992 through 1994; (2) most of the unspent balances resulted from small differences between grantees' budget estimates and actual expenditures, problems related to building Head Start centers, and grantees' inability to spend their awards because of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) disbursement problems; (3) one-half of all the carryover funds in budget year 1993 and about three-fourths of the carryover funds in budget year 1994 were added to grantee awards in subsequent budget years; (4) about one-half and one-fourth of carryover funds in grantee budget years 1993 and 1994 offset grantee awards; (5) Head Start offset 70 to 90 percent of its grantee awards with carryover funds within 2 budget years of an unspent balance; and (6) carryover funds added to grantee awards were used to expand Head Start enrollments, build new facilities, purchase capital equipment and train staff.