Review of Facility Purchases by the Head Start Program During Fiscal Years 1993 and 1994

This final report points out a number of issues the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) needs to address with regards to facility purchases by Head Start grantees. To help ACF address these issues we are recommending, among other things, that ACF; provide technical assistance to grantees acquiring or planning to acquire facilities, require that property inspection reports submitted by grantees include the results for environmental hazards, require grantees to disclose any restrictions on the use of the facilities imposed by organizations providing supplemental funding, ensure that all necessary documentation, such as property appraisals and inspection reports be submitted prior to making grant awards, ensure that purchase requests describe all renovations that need to be made to the property, require grantees considering loans with balloon payments to disclose these plans, and explain how the balloon payment obligation will be met, and develop and implement a system to account for Head Start funds utilized for each facility purchased. The ACF generally concurred with our recommendations.