Head Start boss had own problems

Friday, April 16, 2004 | 10:49 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- The Health and Human Services Department is examining allegations that its chief of Head Start programs, who has been a critic of financial misdeeds at Head Start centers around the country, had herself mismanaged a Head Start program.

Windy M. Hill, who before joining the Bush administration, ran a program in Texas and allegedly collected tens of thousands of dollars in improper payments.

The allegations against Hill, the associate commissioner of the federal Head Start Bureau, were made this week by the National Head Start Association, which represents more than 2,600 of the taxpayer-financed day care centers for preschoolers in poverty.

Hill was in Las Vegas last week, heading up a team looking into the Economic Opportunity Board's management of the Las Vegas Valley's 18 Head Start and Early Head Start centers. The team was following up on a May 2003 triennial review that identified problems in many areas of the program and set out deadlines for fixing those problems. Nearly a year later, Hill was not satisfied that such areas of the program as planning, monitoring, human resources and fiscal management had been improved.

Her decision to accompany the team, however, was unusual, and was only the second time she had visited a site in such a follow-up visit since taking office in early 2002. This, she said in interviews prior to her visit, was an indication of how serious the problems were in the Las Vegas program.

Around the same time, the national group representing most of the nation's Head Start programs had obtained and analyzed financial and management audits of Cen-Tex Family Services in Bastrop, Texas, under the Freedom of Information Act.

Hill oversaw Head Start as Cen-Tex's executive director from 1993 until she joined the Bush administration in January 2002.

The audits, requested by Hill's successor, refer to Hill only by title, not by name.

The financial review and audit say that contrary to Cen-Tex's bylaws, Hill was paid for more than 600 hours of unused vacation time and received three cash bonuses, which the organization said totaled more than $30,000. The audit said the nonprofit did not report the bonuses as taxable income to the government. It was not clear whether Hill had personally declared the bonuses and paid tax on them.

The New York Times

and Sun reporter Timothy Pratt contributed to this story.