Feds yank Head Start control

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006 | 12:34 p.m.

Citing health and safety concerns, the federal government on Monday stripped the troubled Economic Opportunity Board of control of the Las Vegas Valley's 15 Head Start centers.

The government is bringing in a Colorado agency today to take over the operation of the early education program and expects the EOB out by Friday.

The move was made because "we very strongly feel that the health and safety of children is at risk," said Joan E. Ohl, commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, the parent agency for Head Start in Washington.

Federal officials recently found problems ranging from staff not knowing about potentially fatal allergies, to not noting a child's heart condition before sending him to the dentist, also potentially fatal.

Program officials are supposed to get a full medical history of each child and communicate any special needs to the staff. A letter from the federal agency to the EOB didn't specify if there was a problem with the program getting the information or with disseminating it to staff.

The decision to bring in an outside agency and suspend funding based on concerns for the health of children in Head Start and Early Head Start programs is rare, Ohl said. Out of about 1,600 programs nationwide, only three have received what are called "summary suspensions" in the last year.

The EOB, which has run the program for 40 years, will have an opportunity to appeal the suspension, but will still lose control - and funding, which totals about $12.6 million a year - in the interim, federal officials said.

The federal agency announced its decision in a letter that Sharon Fujii, regional administrator of the Administration for Children & Families division, sent Monday to EOB Board Chairman Claude Logan.

Logan did not answer calls seeking comments.

But EOB Executive Director Lester Murray said Monday that things were "business as usual."

"We're still in the running," he said, referring to the agency's right to request a meeting with Fujii's staff before Feb. 21 to appeal the decision. Murray said things wouldn't change while his agency appealed Monday's decision, but Ohl said the outside agency - Denver's Community Development Institute - would run Head Start during the interim, and that funds would not go to the EOB for as long as it took to evaluate the nonprofit organization's appeal.

The federal government's decision came after a January review of the early education program's health services - the latest in a series of negative reviews dating at least to 2003.

In fact, the federal government announced in a separate decision in January 2005 that funds would be taken from the EOB for Head Start - but the nonprofit organization's appeal has prevented any action.

Monday's move is different, however, because the federal agency is bringing in someone else to run the program.

Federal officials found in late January that "EOB had failed to correct ... deficiencies in reporting, tracking and providing required health care services, and that the deficiencies were, in fact, substantially worse," Fujii's letter said.

The required services include physical, hearing and vision screenings, as well as plans for dental treatment and blood tests.

The federal agency's letter notes that not one of 111 children's files contained a follow-up plan to ensure needed medical treatment.

The EOB's assistant director for health services "stated she could not access or provide any report showing the completion of required health services, or any record of ... concerns ... or treatment plans," the letter said.

The federal agency also said the board "had failed in its responsibility to insist on complete and accurate information on a timely basis."

Other flaws found in the visit were that the health of 1,852 children was in the hands of only two people - an associate director of health services and one licensed practical nurse.

An EOB official told federal officials that the health services were being operated "on a crisis basis."

The end result, apart from required services not being supplied to hundreds of children, is that many children with serious conditions go unnoticed.

The federal agency's letter includes the description of an outdated file on "high-risk" children who needed medication. The associate director of health services said she thought there was only one child in that category. Federal officials located two others.

"The associate director expressed great surprise, stating that she was completely unaware of this," the letter said.

One of those children supposedly had an allergy to peanuts that required him to take epinephrine. No one at the center he attended was trained to give him that medicine. However, federal officials looked into the child's record and found that he had an allergy to other nuts.

Similarly, staff members did not keep track of a child who had asthma and needed an inhaler. The associate director also said in the letter that she couldn't say what centers several dozen children with asthma attended, or whether staff knew how to care for them.

Another child had a heart murmur and needed to go to the dentist. Children with that condition may need antibiotics to ward off possible infections in the heart - but the child's murmur was not noted in the dental treatment plan.

Additionally, 80 children were identified by a mental health coordinator as having possible disabilities, but it wasn't clear if those children received any follow-up diagnosis or a treatment plan.

Sandra D'Amico, one of four nurses who resigned from the Head Start program in the last year, said the underlying problem with the way the EOB has been running things was that "management didn't find health to be a priority."

"They weren't seeing the ramifications of what they were doing, and only cared about keeping EOB's contract," D'Amico said. Between Las Vegas and Boston, the nurse has 21 years of Head Start experience.

She said that conditions named by the federal government were "all true."

"In my heart, I felt the children were at risk and there was nothing I could do except walk away and hope the story was told."

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at [email protected].