Federal Head Start official Windy Hill yesterday denied that she misused funds when she led a Texas Head Start chapter and asked for a federal investigation to clear her name.
“As the executive director of the Texas Head Start programs, I was extremely conscious of the need to adhere to the program’s policies and Head Start regulations and to high ethical standards,” Ms. Hill said in a statement issued through her attorney, Derek Van Gilder, in Bastrop, Texas.
“[I]n order to ensure absolutely that these claims are independently considered, I am asking the [Health and Human Services] Inspector General to review them,” she said. “These untrue allegations need to be confronted and answered, quickly and with certainty.”
The National Head Start Association (NHSA), a trade group for the 2,500 programs for low-income preschoolers, last week accused Ms. Hill of “serious misconduct” involving $150,000 and called for her resignation as associate commissioner of the federal Head Start Bureau, which falls under the jurisdiction of HHS.
A new HHS investigation is “absolutely very much needed,” NHSA President Sarah Greene said yesterday.
However, she stood by documents NHSA obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that said that, as leader of Cen-Tex Family Services in Bastrop, Ms. Hill allowed $140,000 in overbilling to occur and personally benefited from unauthorized bonuses and a vacation time cash-out.
Both an outside audit and a 2002 HHS review “confirmed” the misconduct, Ms. Greene said.
But Ms. Hill said that the $140,000 in overbilling occurred after she left the program and she “was not involved with the deposit of these funds into any account.”
She also said that the two “performance-enhancement incentives” of $7,170 and $7,155 were approved by the Cen-Tex board, as was a $7,891 payment for authorized, but unused, vacation time.
All these payments “were reported for tax purposes and taxes paid,” said Ms. Hill, who was the executive director of Cen-Tex from 1993 until she joined HHS in January 2002.
In documents released last week, NHSA said the bonuses and cashed-out vacation time were improper and self-serving, and that Ms. Hill was “in charge” when the $140,000 was improperly drawn down.
HHS officials have decried the accusations against Ms. Hill, a former Head Start child and Head Start parent, as mean-spirited and unwarranted.
The accusations against Ms. Hill come in the wake of 16 months of acrimony between NHSA and the White House over a proposed reform of the federally run preschool program.
The Bush administration wants to give a handful of governors, who meet strict eligibility rules, control of the Head Start programs in their state so they can meld them with state early-education networks. The NHSA decries this approach, saying it would lead to a dismantling of Head Start.
Some Head Start programs have made news in recent months for fiscal mismanagement or excessive salaries. The NHSA linked the timing of these scandals to Ms. Hill, saying “she has dragged out into the headlines every possible problem … and trashed programs across the country.”
“To think that she was, at the same time, benefiting from a cover-up of her own misconduct during her tenure as head of a Head Start agency is simply astonishing,” Ms. Greene said.
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