State Auditor Shad White issued the following statement.
Millions in federal grant funds continue to flow from the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) to nonprofits and school districts to operate afterschool programs for children, even as MDE has failed to publish federally mandated evaluations for years according to a new analysis from the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor.
“As we have seen on the news in Minnesota and here at home during the welfare scandal, making sure that these taxpayer funds are monitored is critical,” said Auditor White. “We will continue to highlight any weaknesses we see in the programs providing money for afterschool or childcare centers.”
In fiscal year 2024, the nonprofits and school districts analyzed in this report spent over $11 million of Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) grant funds to provide afterschool care to students. MDE requires subgrantees to collect and submit performance data. MDE is then required to use those for an annual statewide program evaluation. MDE has failed to publish this required report to the federal government since November 2022.
Analysts at the State Auditor’s Office emphasized other findings, too. For instance:
- Subgrantees may have violated state and federal regulations by engaging external evaluators who were not independent. One grantee hired an individual who worked for the nonprofit arm of the organization being evaluated, causing a potential conflict of interest.
- Moreover, attendance data for the centers grouped participant attendance in multi-day and multi-hour increments. This means that a student who showed up one day or only a handful of hours each month would be included in the same “attendance bucket” as someone with perfect attendance.
This report is the second in a series of reports focusing on taxpayer-funded childcare programs in Mississippi.
29 comments:
This is maybe one of the few things Shad has right, although a day late and dollar short. These places should have been investigated years ago. He needs to stop the grandstanding and take a look at throw-away programs like this and Head Start. Worthless babysitting services. There are ZERO metrics attached to this free money and there has been no accountability to these taxpayer dollars.
Fraud in Mississippi? Come on man.
Let's ask Deputy Phil what he thinks about Shad finding fraud in Mississippi!
Nobody I KNOW CAN AFFORD these places. 2,000 a month. So I imagine someone is getting rich from these programs .
Sounds like a worthy endeavor. But it’s nibbling at the edges, and it’s not just White. American education is broken, top to bottom, a dark, seething pile of not-working-anymore. Scrap it and reboot, but be prepared for the whiny Left to screech to the heavens about it.
It’s the same grift as the “learing centers” in Minneapolis. It’s not meant for the tax paying “class” it is meant for the “benefits” class. They are the “breeders” and we are the “feeders”
Ratholes with no accountability
While reviewing performance of after school programs, the AGO definitely needs to review government paid daycare and child feeding programs to ensure taxpayers are receiving the benefits these programs tout.
Every government program appears to be a scam at this point...
Maybe Education should just give the money away to friends and family like MDHS, then the auditor will never notice until Feel blows his whistle.
IMHO, these are necessary programs but as with any publicly funded program, need to be VERY closely monitored to minimize graft and corruption. Those on both sides of the trough (providers and recipients) will squeal. I'm sure it will cost a lot of resources to monitor at the level needed.
Shads failed to issue state financial audits and federal program audits for multiple years. He’s wagging the dog with MDE. His office is a joke
... a day late and dollar short. These places should have been investigated years ago.
Maybe you should call White and offer to prioritize the work queue for his office. After you've completed the task be sure to come back and offer all of us an opportunity to critique your decisions.
So we issue a report, no indictments. Must be election time again. SOP.
Good Lord! How much state money has Shad spent on these meaningless studies? Stay in your lane, Shad! Go get Phil!
11:29: It’s not our job. Just us IS our tax dollars. Get a grip.
Just more government bureaucrats that are just now playing catch-up for clicks.
Does Fitch indict anybody?
If the Auditor has time to issue all these reports about what happened in FFY 2024, why can't his auditors finish anybody's Single Audit Report for FFY 2024? Rumor has it that few of the state agencies have received their report for FFY 2024 while Shad and his team are off writing side reports about after school programs. Do you job, State Auditor.
Head Start a “throw away” program? Too much conservative kool-aid but you keep believing that. Oh that’s right yall don’t want poor kids (no matter their color) to have a head start…
Shad chasing minnows again
Head Start has been a scam for decades and started by LBJ in 1965 as part of his great society grift.
Two good things about chasing minnows. You can catch a mess real fast, and they don't bite back!
Where your proof?
Proof that it is an LBJ program? You hitting the 80 proof?
3:24 - I grew up very poor, but my parents had too much pride and self determination to depend on the government to raise me. No need to ask Head Start for anything and to be a drag on society.
Head Start has been a failure. A colossal drain on money, funneled to “non-profits”. What a joke.
@6:41 - you don’t think so good do you? They were asking for proof it’s been a scam for decades. All the studies I’ve seen on head start point to positive impact. What’s the scam?
There are some things worth spending money on and which still provide a return greater than the amount invested. If you think that non-profits shouldn’t run the programs and the government should take it over, that might be an argument worth having. Mississippi especially gets a much larger share of this due to our poor economics.
Head start is chump change when you look at the total budget. Something like 0.15 percent. We send about the same amount as this program costs to Israel every year. We spend more on farm subsidies. We spend more on oil subsidies. There’s about 3 trillion in the budget I’d cut before I got to Head Start. Interesting that helping the kids is at the top of your cuts list.
Head Start is chump change....but the cultural rot that it conditions toward multigenerational poverty is incalculable. The "head start" a child should naturally have - and that doesn't cost one red cent - is a well-prepared man and woman getting/staying married and committing to building a family. When that doesn't happen......a gabillion dollars via a social engineering experiment ain't gonna fix anything....except to perpetuate the throwing of money at a problem with zero results, and then blaming that the it doesn't work. "It's all for the children" is a disguised and corrupt grift presented as a moral crusade.
Sounds like you’re operating in a fantasy land. 42% of marriages end in divorce. The realities of what many children experience in their home life isn’t going to change because you think it should. Programs that help the helpless are a worthy endeavor. You can claim the programs have zero impact, but that’s just your fantasy land as well. Many studies have been done on these programs and they are effective in the real world.
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