Editorial: Lagging behind on Head Start

Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006 | 7:33 a.m.

Federal officials say hundreds of children from poor families are not receiving adequate medical and dental care in the Las Vegas Valley's Head Start program, which continues to be operated by a nonprofit agency that receives millions in federal funding despite ongoing deficiencies since 2002.

According to a story in the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday, fewer than two-thirds of the estimated 1,800 children enrolled in the program receive the physical and dental exams that U.S. Head Start requires, and fewer than 25 percent received the dental treatments they needed.

The program, which helps poor families obtain education, health care and child care for their children up to age 5, is funded by the Health and Human Services Department through its Admininstration for Children and Families office. The federal government pays the valley's nonprofit Economic Opportunity Board $12.2 million annually to run 15 Head Start centers locally.

Nurses who have resigned from the program told the Sun that immunization records were outdated, as were hearing tests and newborn health checkups.

The EOB's Head Start operations have been under federal scrutiny since a 2002 audit revealed missing state and federal grants, inexplicable financial deficits involving large sums of money and inadequate health and dental care for the children.

The Administration for Children and Families issued letters on two occasions last year that threatened to cancel the EOB's contract. The EOB appealed and will continue to run the program until the appeal is settled.

That doesn't make sense, but it is the law. Federal funding cannot be withheld and the contract cannot go to another agency while the EOB's appeal is pending, according to Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, who in December wrote a letter to the Sun regarding the EOB's management of Head Start.

"This is, in a word, nuts," Horn wrote. "I have testified twice before Congress that this law needs to be changed."

Congress needs to close this loophole that could be preventing untold thousands of children from receiving the health and dental care that Head Start promises. It is unconscionable that this group continues to receive a huge sum of taxpayers' money for services that the federal government knows are deficient, even as it cuts the check.