Head Start payments to Wisconsin providers are half what they were a year ago

Yahoo

18-04-2025

Children at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)
Federal payments to Wisconsin's Head Start programs in the first three and a half months of 2025 are half what they were a year ago, exacerbating worries about the future of the program that provides child care and early education to low-income families.
The Office of Head Start's payments to Wisconsin program operators from Jan. 1 through April 15 of this year were down by $35 million from the same period in 2024, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said this week.
Nationwide, Head Start program operators have received $943 million less during that period this year compared with the period a year ago, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), who published a table of calculations comparing disbursements for every state in a press release. The table shows Wisconsin disbursements of $34.5 million as of April 15, compared with $69.5 million in the 2024 period.
Baldwin contrasted the potential impact with the pledge by the White House and the Republican majority in Congress to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump's first term.
'The idea that the president is actively working to give the biggest corporations and wealthiest Wall Street guys a new tax break while taking away preschool and child care from Wisconsinites is beyond the pale,' said Baldwin, vowing to fight actions of President Donald Trump she described as 'defunding Head Start.'
The calculations in Murray's table are based on Head Start disbursement data that Senate Democrats pulled from the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
While most states in Murray's table had lower disbursements compared with a year ago, Alabama, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia all showed increases.
The calculations put the big-picture numbers on funding disruptions that Head Start providers have been experiencing in the last three months, said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.
Those disruptions first surfaced after Trump took office, with delays of up to two weeks in late January and early February for Head Start programs seeking authorized payment for their expenses.
More recently, the disruptions have continued as providers who have submitted the required documents for payment have been confronted with unexpected demands for 'more information' Mauer said Friday.
'The [federal] administration is really messing around, pulling out the foundational blocks of grant operation,' Mauer said.
In order to get approved for a grant, recipients must provide a detailed accounting of how it will be spent, she said. To get payment, providers must submit detailed documentation that the expense it covers has already been incurred.
'This is a highly regulated system,' Mauer said. 'There's a very rigorous initial grant application process, and then on an ongoing basis grantees are demonstrating, 'We told you what we're going to spend the money on. Now based on what I told you, I'm asking for that money.''
The disclosure of the drop in Head Start funding comes a week after a published report raised the possibility that Head Start will be zeroed out of the next federal budget.
It also comes as some providers wait for information about their upcoming grant replenishments, Mauer said.
Head Start grants are provided under multi-year contracts signed with providers. The money itself, however, does not come to providers in large lump sums but in smaller amounts paid upon the submission of documented expenses, Mauer said.
Every six months, an allotment from the provider's grant is made available, she said. Those funds are not paid directly to the provider, however. The money is set aside for the provider to draw on after submitting expense documents through the federal online payment system.
Providers' grant cycles start on the first of the month. In Wisconsin, providers whose grant cycle started Nov. 1 have now received confirmation of their next grant allotment for the six months starting May 1, Mauer said Friday.
But with the previous funding access problems and then the sudden closing three weeks ago of half of Head Start's national offices, including the Chicago Region 5 office that served Wisconsin and five other states, providers were apprehensive.
'The level of uncertainty and chaos is so dramatic,' Mauer said — in contrast not only to the Biden administration, but also the previous Trump administration. Until this year, 'these kinds of questions and uncertainties didn't exist.'
Three providers whose grant cycle started Dec. 1 are waiting to learn whether their next allotment will become available starting June 1 as scheduled.
Mauer said the Senate Democrats' calculations appear to be 'showing the cumulative effect' of the access to HHS funding streams by the team working for DOGE, an agency directed by billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk.
DOGE is the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency, although the office is not a cabinet department, and many of its claims of government savings have been questioned.
The hold-up on information is having 'a tremendous negative effect on our programs and it's alarming,' Mauer said. 'When we think of what are the impacts of Region 5 closing and that we continue to have very, very minimal and slow communication from the Office of Head Start — they need to start communicating with grantees in a much more substantive way.'
The Wisconsin Examiner contacted the federal Department of Health and Human Services using the HHS website for journalists' inquiries and has not yet received a response. This report will be updated when a response is received.
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