Head Start’s top official under fire

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 | 10:52 a.m.

A group representing most of the nation's nearly 2,600 Head Start programs is calling for the resignation of the top Head Start official in Washington, who was in Las Vegas last week investigating the Economic Opportunity Board.

The National Head Start Association wants Windy Hill, associate commissioner for the Head Start bureau, to resign because it says she was implicated in her former job as executive director of a Texas Head Start program in "awarding improper bonuses to herself, cashing out ... unauthorized vacation pay ... and illicit income."

"We want for her to resign," said Ron Herndon, chairman of the board of the National Head Start Association and director of a Head Start program in Portland, Ore., since 1975. "If I did what she did in her program, I would be fired."

Hill could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for the administration on children and families at the Health and Human Services Department -- Head Start's parent agency -- said in a statement that Hill "has worked tirelessly to improve both the quality and the effectiveness of the Head Start program."

"It is sad, therefore, that the National Head Start Association would make such a mean-spirited and unwarranted attack on her integrity."

The association cited a private audit and HHS findings against Cen-Tex Family Services, Inc., which Hill used to head. Both the audit and the HHS found problems with the agency's accounting system and internal controls.

The audit found that the "former executive director" received more vacation pay when she left than allowed under policy and received "substantial bonuses ... without documentation to indicate the basis for the bonuses."

At Cen-Tex -- the agency in Bastrop, Texas, 30 miles southeast of Austin, where Hill was executive director from December 1993 to December 2001 -- current Executive Director Mary Garcia-Todd said this morning that the agency was fixing the issues raised in the audit and putting new procedures in place.

Garcia-Todd took over in March 2002, shortly after Hill took her new position in Washington. The audit, she said, occurred several months later, and covered events in the previous year.

"It is a reflection of things that happened under her leadership," she said.

Garcia-Todd said her agency is still correcting some of the problems highlighted in the audit, which was sent to the regional office of the Health and Human Services Department in Dallas, as per normal practice.

She never heard of any actions taken against Hill, who took over at the Head Start bureau, a part of HHS, in January 2002.

Hill was in Las Vegas last week leading a four-day investigation into the EOB, the Las Vegas Valley's largest nonprofit organization and administrator of the $12 million-plus local Head Start program. The visit was the result of ongoing questions about the EOB's fiscal management of that program, Hill said in recent interviews. A report from the visit detailing the federal government's findings are expected within a month.

"If I were petty, I could easily say that people in glass houses should not throw stones," said Chester Richardson, board member of the nonprofit agency, on hearing of the allegations against Hill.

"But I would hope that the same level of technical assistance and patience and support given her when she was going through her problems would be given to us."

Diba Hadi, director of the family development division of the EOB, which includes the agency's Head Start and child care programs, would not comment on the National Head Start Association's allegations.

Herndon said his organization is not against Head Start programs nationwide being called to task when they are found to have problems managing federal funds -- but he is against the high profile Hill has taken and believes HHS, should be dealing with local problems from its regional offices around the nation.

Before Hill took office that's how "major compliance problems," found at about 11 percent of programs nationwide, according to the most recent figures, were handled, Herndon said.

That procedure should have been followed in the case of the EOB, which received negative triennial reviews from the regional offices since 1997, he said.

"In the Las Vegas case, it appears procedures were not followed. If corrective actions plans were not followed up on, it suggests there's a problem at that level," he said.

Herndon said Hill's aggressive public stance may be linked to a move by certain Republican members of Congress to take Head Start from nonprofit agencies and put the early childhood programs in the hands of state governments nationwide.

But his organization -- of which the EOB was a dues-paying member as recently as last year -- is mainly concerned with Hill's credibility to be "chasing down every program that's poorly performing."

"What does she know, what does she add to the conversation, to be able to fix a troubled program?"