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GAO-07-194R 1 (2006-11-17)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptatxh0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Aountability * Integrity * Reabity United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 November 17, 2006 The Honorable George Miller Ranking Minority Member Committee on Education and the Workforce House of Representatives Subject: Head Start: Additional Information on Implementation of Transportation Regulations The Head Start program, administered by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), provides grants to local organizations to offer comprehensive early childhood services to approximately 900,000 poor children, ages 5 years or younger. While transportation is not a required service, in order to make Head Start more widely available to very poor children, over 70 percent of Head Start grantees and delegates provide transportation to at least some of the children they enroll. To address concerns about transporting children safely, the 1992 Head Start Improvement Act directed the Office of Head Start (OHS) to develop transportation regulations to ensure the safety and effectiveness of transportation services made available to children by Head Start grantees and delegates. In 2001, citing safety concerns related to vehicles as well as the variation in states' standards for pupil transport, Head Start issued regulations governing transportation services. Among other things, the regulations mandated that grantees and delegates use school buses or similar alternative vehicles and that children be placed in restraints and attended by bus monitors. Grantees and delegates were required to meet most provisions of the regulations shortly after issuance, except for the requirements regarding age-appropriate child restraints, bus monitors, and the use of school buses or alternative vehicles. Grantees and delegates were expected to comply with the restraint and monitor requirements in 2004, unless they requested a time extension, in which case they were expected to comply by the end of the 2006 program year.2 Grantees and delegates had two opportunities -one in January 2004 and one in December 2005-to request more time from OHS to implement the restraint and bus monitor requirements. Currently, the compliance date for vehicles is December 2006. In commenting on the 2001 regulations, grantees and delegates expressed concerns about potential unintended effects on Head Start programs of implementing these requirements, such as reducing the The total enrollment figure is from the Office of Head Start for fiscal year 2005 and includes enrollment for both Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Head Start generally serves children ages 3 to 5 years old, while Early Head Start serves children from birth to age 3 and low-income pregnant women. 2 The effective compliance dates for the restraint and monitor provisions were first extended to January 2006 via an interim final rule published in 2004. Then, Public Law 109-149, passed in 2005, extended the compliance date for the vehicle provision to June 30, 2006, and also allowed the Secretary of HHS to waive the restraint and monitor requirements through September 30, 2006. Subsequent to this, Public Law 109-234 changed the compliance date for vehicles to December 2006. On October 4, 2006, HHS published a final rule allowing grantees and delegates to annually request a waiver from the restraint and monitor requirements based on good cause. GAO-07-194R Head Start Transportation Information Page 1

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