Head Start faces ticking clock to fix its problems

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

WINDOW ROCK — For Francis Becenti and his staff, the clock has started ticking.

After failing to pass a critical Budget and Finance Committee last week, a new plan designed to bring the tribe's troubled Head Start program back to full health finally won the committee's approval Tuesday afternoon. Becenti, the program's director, now has 12 months to get it done.

Ever since the U.S. Health Department brought the early childhood education program which serves thousands of Navajo pre-schoolers across the reservation to a screeching halt last May for letting some potentially dangerous applicants slip through its human resources department, the tribe has been bringing classes back on line in fits and starts.

The corrective action plan the committee approved Tuesday, said Elizabeth Begay, the tribe's acting auditor general, "will demonstrate to our federal regulators that we are making efforts to correct the deficiencies."

With its vote, the committee also ordered Becenti to update the Auditor General's Office of his progress implementing the plan in six months, and the Auditor General's Office to find out if he and his staff have finished in 12.

If they're not, Begay said, sanctions up to a 20 percent cut to Becenti's salary, and maybe even Education Department Director Tommy Lewis' would follow.

Committee Vice-Chairman Leonard Chee, who voted against accepting the corrective action plan and the proposed sanctions, didn't think that was enough. Considering the program's systemic failures, he said, "if we get rid of just one person ... we'll be stuck with the same problems."

Problems continue
And judging from the auditor general's last performance audit of the program, those problems are still many.

According to the 26-page report, some Head Start centers are still operating without certified teachers some without any teachers at all and failing to provide all the promised services. And the program's failure to meet the enrollment figures it was funded for, the report adds, or to maintain adequate financial controls, could jeopardize federal funding to come.

"All indications are that management is not evaluating and monitoring reported Head Start activities to ensure effective use of resources," the report concludes.

For all those problems, Becenti insists the tribe is making good progress.

To fill Head Start's classrooms with enough certified teachers, for example, it's working with Navajo Technical College, the former Crownpoint Institute of Technology. For every student who enrolls in the school's teacher education program, the tribe covers the costs of books and supplies.

That might do for now, Chee said, but what about a year from now when those graduates are lured away by the promise of fatter paychecks elsewhere?

"They're not going to stay with Head Start," he said. "They're going to go to greener pastures."

Becenti said all graduates will be expected to stay with Head Start for at least three years. But getting them to follow through, he conceded, could prove a challenge.

To help correct Head Start's financial problems, Becenti said he'd just taken on a chief financial officer by noon, he said, she'd been on the job just four hours and would be contracting with a private auditing firm. Dissatisfied with the job the press was doing, he was also looking for a Navajo-speaking liaison to take central office's message of progress to the chapters.

"All we're relying on now is 'The Truth Well Told,' and sometimes it's a little amiss," he said, taking a jab at The Independent and its slogan.

Becenti has returned none of The Independent's recent messages requesting an interview.

Enrollment efforts
As for student enrollment, the Head Start director said his staff has been ratcheting up its recruitment efforts with biweekly drives.

Before the feds shut the program down, 210 centers across the reservation were serving some 4,000 students. Since federal funds started flowing again, Laverne Barton, the program's assistant manager, said the tribe has reopened 83 and sent 1,920 students back to class. And just this Friday, she added, Washington gave the tribe the green light to open a few dozen more, making room for another 560 students. Becenti wants to get student enrollment back up to where it was before the shutdown, but he doesn't expect the rest of the centers to be ready until the next school year.

"Some (of the centers) are so dilapidated and well worn that they won't be able to open this year," he said.

Becenti figures it will cost close to $3 million to finish the work. And since Washington won't pay for building renovations, he'll probably end up turning to the Navajo Nation Council.

Budget and Finance Committee member Jonathan Nez wondered if it wasn't time for the tribe to simply let Head Start go, to let the chapters run each center the way most cities do.

"Maybe it's time ... to let the local people start taking over," he said.

Although Council Delegate Ida Nelson, who sponsored the corrective action plan, liked the idea, it didn't gain much traction Tuesday. For the next few weeks, Head Start staff will have their hands full getting ready for a federal review team's April 30 visit to the reservation.

It was a visit from a similar review team a year ago that got the Head Start in trouble with Washington to begin with. According to the team's subsequent report, the tribe had hired 106 Head Start employees with criminal records, 51 of them either charged with or convicted of serious offenses. Its troubles only got worse the following July when Washington issued another report listing over 80 deficiencies with the program.

Despite what progress the tribe has made setting things right, the Budget and Finance Committee sees a lot of work ahead for Head Start.

As Chairman LoRenzo Bates put it, "there's still a lot of uncovered rocks out there."