WASHINGTON (AP) — Head Start preschools serving thousands of children around the country could be at risk of closing because they remain locked out of their federal funding, a problem that first surfaced last week during President Donald Trump's aborted effort to freeze federal grants.
Administrators around the country last week discovered they were locked out of a government website used to access grant funding for Head Start, an early education program that serves some of the nation's neediest families and children. Medicaid administrators reported similar problems.
The website went back online for many operators. But a week later, 45 Head Start grant recipients across the country reported problems accessing their funding, said Tommy Sheridan of the National Head Start Association. Some were still waiting for invoices to be paid a week after submitting them — a process that normally takes four to five hours, he said.
The delays can be catastrophic for Head Start operations, many of which are fully funded by federal money that is doled out on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. In the wake of the federal funding pause last week, a Michigan nonprofit that runs 17 Head Start schools had to close its doors for a day because it could not pay its employees. It reopened once the money was released.
In Wisconsin, the National Centers for Learning Excellence, which serves more than 200 children and their families, shut down for a week and laid off staff because it could not access its funding. It was set to reopen Wednesday morning, a day after the money materialized.
The closure was disastrous for families that rely on the Head Start centers, said Bill Walsh, the organization's operations director.
“They cannot go to work (or) they have to scramble to find somebody else to watch their children, whether that’s another family member or a neighbor or some other in-home, potentially unlicensed, you know, child care arrangement,” Walsh said.
At least a dozen other grant recipients in Wisconsin could not access their funds in Wisconsin. Other centers in Pennsylvania also were contemplating shutting down if they can’t access funding soon.
“If this situation is not resolved immediately, I am anticipating seeing more centers having to close,” said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.
The disruption coincided with a far-reaching directive from the Trump administration to halt federal grants, which sparked chaos throughout the federal government. The White House later clarified that the order was not supposed to include Head Start and Medicaid. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week called the Medicaid problems an outage and has not said whether the Head Start payment system was purposefully taken offline.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. ___
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