The Trump administration’s temporary federal funding freeze announced last week has caused widespread confusion among Colorado’s Head Start programs, and some programs are reporting delayed payments from federal grants.

Head Start programs rely on federal funding to provide child care for low-income children from birth to kindergarten. There are programs in 34 counties in Colorado that serve more than 11,000 children, according to the state’s Department of Early Childhood.

Leaders of those programs panicked last week when the White House’s Office of Management and Budget announced a sweeping freeze on federal grant programs. The White House clarified later that Head Start was not part of the freeze, and OMB rescinded the memo the next day.

But the dust hasn’t settled yet.

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Carolyn Romero, a spokesperson for the CDEC, said intermittent issues have arisen in the online system to access funding, causing some programs to face delays or difficulties getting money. She said there isn’t a clear pattern to which programs are affected.

Head Start programs around the country are experiencing problems accessing funds.

“Without the ability to predictably pay the rent, buy the food needed to feed the children, and meet payroll, our entire operation is in jeopardy. And the ones who suffer the most are the children in our care,” Yasmina Vinci, National Head Start Association executive director, said in a statement Friday.

The freeze and its ripple effect has not resulted in Colorado providers missing payments or needing to shut down, but they say they’ve still felt an impact.

“We’re on the edge of our seats and crossing our fingers with every draw. But we shouldn’t have to be holding our breath for funding that we’ve already been awarded,” said Lindsay McNicholas, the executive director at the Family Star Montessori School in Denver, which is a bilingual program that serves 248 children and employs about 85 people.

McNicholas said it has been difficult to even access the online payment management system the school uses to draw down funds. Staff will get an error or “under maintenance” message and need to try multiple times to get into the system.

“We’re needing be really patient and persistent with the system.” she said.

And when they can submit a request, it takes longer than usual to get money — one week versus the typical three days for the last one.

We’re on the edge of our seats and crossing our fingers with every draw. But we shouldn’t have to be holding our breath for funding that we’ve already been awarded.

– Lindsay McNicholas, executive director at the Family Star Montessori School in Denver

That created anxiety for how Family Star could pay its employees, since it typically aligns its federal funding draw-downs with its payroll schedule.

“It was dangerously close to our payroll not being able to be funded appropriately, and we ran the risk of overdraft on that account. It’s all a sequence of timing,” she said.

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Pamela Harris, the CEO of Mile High Early Learning in Denver said staff got an error message on Jan. 28 when they tried to log on. It read, in part, that the system was taking “additional measures” to process payments in light of the executive order regarding “potentially unallowable grant payments.”

The school submitted a request on Jan. 29 and got its payment the next day, which she said is normal.

Heather Frenz, the executive director at the Colorado Head Start Association, said the organization sent out a survey to their providers on Jan. 31 to get a sense of the difficulties. Sixteen responded and some reported problems such as payment delays, system access issues and overall concern about missing payroll and other bills.

But she said that as of Friday morning, the major problems were cleared up and residual technical issues were decreasing. She suspects that there was a rush to draw down funds on the day of the OMB memo that could have created a backlog.

Mostly, she said, providers are asking for guidance and a clear process for accessing their federal dollars.

“We need to remain calm, because there are a lot of changes happening at once,” she said. “Moving forward, we just need clear explanations. If it’s going to be different, that’s fine, but we don’t want to impact our children and families.”

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