Results of Limited Scope Review at Brooklyn, NY's Metropolitan Child Services, Inc.'s, Head Start Program

We reviewed the financial conditions at Metropolitan Child Services, Inc. (Metropolitan), as part of a nationwide series of reviews requested by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Head Start, for use in its overall assessment of Head Start grantees that have applied for additional funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). We found that Metropolitan used Head Start funds to pay non-Head Start expenditures. In addition, Metropolitan charged unallowable expenditures to its Head Start grant, did not properly allocate shared costs to all benefiting programs, and did not accurately report the financial status of its Head Start grant to ACF. Lastly, Metropolitan complied with Federal regulations related to program governance.

We recommended that ACF, in determining whether Metropolitan should be awarded additional Head Start and Recovery Act grant funding, consider the information presented in this report in assessing Metropolitan's capacity to manage and account for Federal funds.