UNRAKED LEAVES, TOASTER CRUMBS AND TODDLER LUNCH MONEY
TRUMPED UP TO TRASH HEAD START PROGRAMS ACROSS U.S.
NHSA: “Let’s Get Serious About Real Accountability and End the Gotcha! Games”;
More Than A Dozen Examples of Bogus “Non-Compliance” Instances Cited.
WASHINGTON,
D.C.///March 24, 2005///Hundreds of Head Start grantees are being unfairly tagged as out of compliance with federal standards under a wide range of subjective and even bizarre “parking ticket” citations that include flashlights with dead batteries, toaster oven crumbs claimed to pose a fire hazard, unraked playground leaves described as a “choking hazard” and even a toddler’s lunch money trumped up into a fiscal management complaint, according to the National Head Start Association (NHSA).
NHSA released a list today of more than a dozen such bogus non-compliance findings that are, in a break with the past, now being handed out routinely by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) review teams that have been instructed to find problems in nearly every program they inspect – whether or not meaningful problems exist. Even though the non-compliance citations may seem minor, they can be turned by HHS into a “deficiency” finding that may lead to the termination of a Head Start operation’s federal grant.
NHSA President and CEO Sarah Greene: “We are all for the strictest possible accountability to make sure that every federal taxpayer dollar spent on Head Start is used exactly as intended. We strongly support swift termination of Head Start grantees that have demonstrated an inability to meet the needs of the at-risk children served by this program. And we are on board with nearly every single one of the recommendations outlined by the General Accountability Office in its reports showing glaring shortcomings and mismanagement in the HHS oversight of Head Start programs.”
Greene added: “However, we can not stand by idly and watch as people falsely claim that their agenda is ‘accountability’ when that is just a label that they have hijacked in order to disguise their true intent of dismantling Head Start as it exists today. It is now painfully clear from scores of Head Start grantees across the U.S. that federal reviewers are under instruction to play a ‘gotcha!’ game where they find problems even if they have to pull something out of thin air. This is a mockery of the real accountability that NHSA and its members are 100 percent behind.”
NHSA Board Chairman Ron Herndon, who is director of the Albina Head Start program in Portland, Oregon, said: “I have been administering a Head Start program for decades now and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like this OSHA-run-amok style of flyspecking that federal reviewers are now exhibiting in order to taint the good name of Head Start programs. We have talked to some of these reviewers and they have been candid in admitting that they are instructed to either dig up some dirt or find some speck of something that can be trumped up into a deficiency finding.”
Herndon added: “Where there are real problems with a Head Start grantee, let’s clean house and get the bad apples out of the barrel. I’m all for that and I don’t know of anyone in Head Start who takes a different view. But those of us who are running top-notch programs are not going to allow ourselves to be shut down by people who are using ‘accountability’ as cover to manufacture phony deficiencies. These bogus accusations may seem minor, but this is serious stuff that can lead to the termination of a Head Start grant. And that, it would seem, is exactly what the end game is here. HHS wants to terminate grantees – no matter how much it has to phony things up to do so.”
EXAMPLES OF BOGUS NON-COMPLIANCE CITED
Phony “non-compliance” findings of a non-fiscal nature leveled recently against Head Start grantees include the following:
- Unraked leaves on a Head Start playground were cited as a potential “choking hazard” for children.
- Failure to remove bread crumbs from a toaster oven on a daily basis was cited as serious potential fire hazard.
- “D” cell batteries were found to be dead in flashlights in two classrooms.
- A Head Start classroom had a patch of fabric attached to its ceiling, and the program in question was found to be non-compliant for failing to “prove” that the swatch was not flammable.
- A classroom had properly posted a choking emergency poster depicting an infant/toddler, but did not have alongside it a second poster showing the identical information with the substitution of an illustration featuring a slightly older preschool-age child.
- A Head Start grantee with several classrooms was faulted on an across-the-board basis because a reviewer witnessed an instance in one classroom where staff failed to eat a meal with Head Start children.
- Bus monitors were cited for standing up to help children get on a bus.
Bogus fiscal management-related non-compliance findings leveled recently against Head Start grantees include the following:
- The fact that a Head Start teacher used personal funds to buy classroom supplies was cited as an instance of noncompliance.
- Four Head Start children – out of more than 1500 in the program in question – who were ineligible for the USDA's free- and reduced-price lunch program and who attended a school-based Head Start center were asked to pay for school lunches because the school's principal misunderstood Head Start's bar on charging any fees. A non-compliance finding was claimed
- in this matter, even though the principal is not affiliated with the grantee and the program did not receive the lunch money.
- The fact that a grantee had a credit card with a $25,000 credit limit was cited in support of a deficiency. There was no allegation that the card had been misused, the $25,000 credit limit was the minimum granted by the card issuer, and access to the account was strictly limited to the Executive Director and Fiscal Officer.
- All required financial records at a Head Start program were available, but a reviewer felt the records might have been organized better.
- Two digits in an accounting ID tracking number affixed to a piece of classroom equipment were transposed.
ABOUT NHSA
The National Head Start Association is a private not-for-profit membership organization dedicated exclusively to meeting the needs of Head Start children and their families. It represents more than 1 million children, 200,000 staff and 2,700 Head Start programs in the United States. The Association provides support for the entire Head Start community by advocating for policies that strengthen services to Head Start children and their families; by providing extensive training and professional development to Head Start staff; and by developing and disseminating research, information, and resources that enrich Head Start program delivery.
CONTACT: Ailis Aaron, (703) 276-3265 or aaaron@hastingsgroup.com.
EDITOR’S NOTES: A streaming audio recording of the news event will be available on the Web as of 4 p.m. ET on March 24, 2005 at http://www.SaveHeadStart.org.
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