Head Start inspection reveals challenges

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Navajo Nation education officials are feeling good about what federal Head Start inspectors say they are finding on their latest trip through the area. But staff in the field are reporting more problems.

Since the U.S. Health Department brought the earlychildhood education program to a screeching halt across the reservation a year ago, for letting some potentially dangerous people slip through its human resources department, the tribe has been bringingclasses back on line in fits and starts. As of a month ago, 83 of 210 centers were open again and 1,920 of4,000 students were back in class. A few dozen more re-openings are reportedly on the way.

A team of inspectors from Head Start headquarters inWashington, D.C., was back on the reservation this week for a regular site visit to see if more centers are ready to reopen and if the ones that had are complying with federal regulations. Federal Head Start officials could not be reached for comment.

According to Tommy Lewis, director of the Navajo Nation's Division of Din Education, the inspectors like what they have seen. Although the centers were put on notice that the inspectors were in the area, Lewis said they were not sure if or when they would show up. He met with the inspectors Wednesday.

"Many of them were impressed," he said of the progress the tribe was making. "They're very upbeat. They're very enthused about what they saw."

Of the additional 80-plus deficiencies the Health Department cited the tribe's Head Start program for after shutting it down last May, Lewis figured that 95 percent had been fully corrected. But he conceded that some important work lies ahead.

Although the tribe has adopted new rules for screening Head Start applicants for criminal history, for example, Lewis believes it ought to do more. The bureaucracy of clearing everyone against state, federal, and tribal records still poses a risk, he said. He has proposed issuing every cleared Head Start employee a picture ID card to ease tracking.

Then there is the challenge of making sure every Head Start instructor, whether a teacher or a teacher's aid, is fully qualified. According to a recent performance audit from the tribe's own Auditor General's Office, some centers are still operating without certified teachers some without any teachers at all and are failing to provide promised services.

Just as Head Start Director Francis Recent stated a month ago before the tribe's Budget and Finance Committee, Lewis agreed it was hard to keepqualified staff with the program when other schools are offering higher salaries.

"It's so easy for them to transfer out, so we're losing them that way," he said.

According to Gwendolyn Teengar, the Chichiltah Head Start center south of Vanderwagen may be one of thefew operating centers on the reservation with a fully qualified staff. Teengar works at the center and has her daughter enrolled there.

But to hear Teengar tell it, that may be one of the few things the center had going for it. It did not take long for her to run through a list of things wrong with the place. Dirt is piling up behind thebuilding from successive rains and is holding water and threatening to infect the walls with mold. There is the lack of accessibility for the disabled. There are 28 students sharing a building designed for 22. There is the absence of a phone for the past eight years. And then there is the milk.

Teengar said the center gets its milk delivered from a company in Texas. By the time it reaches Chichiltah, it is sometimes spoiled. Teengar inquired why the center does not get its milk from Gallup, and she was told itdoes not because the program is locked into a contract with the Texas company.

"It's ridiculous the things we have to go through,"she said.

Teengar was not at work this week, so she could not say whether the federal inspectors who will be leaving today stopped by Chichiltah. Either way, Lewis said the team would have a report of its visit ready within 45 days.