A group of unhappy former Head Start employees in Junction City have been making their concerns known. Officials have responded.
Former employee, Cheri Milam, stated she contacted the federal Region Seven Administration and Families in February to express her concerns about what she was seeing in the operation of the local Head Start program. That program served preschool aged children. “Spent two hours discussing with a gal my concerns with the facility and things going on behind the scene with personnel as well as finances, inventory, a lot of different issues. Consequently three weeks later I was terminated on February 8th.”
Milam said later that month ACS did an unannounced review of the program.
One of the employees in the kitchen at the Head Start operation, Mary Lowe, noted that the executive director LaFarris Risby has her own daycare center and they were allegedly fixing food for the daycare children. “I was like I don’t know we should be doing that, but she’s the executor and the grantee so we did what we were told to do. And then when the reports and stuff all came back and came down we were told then that we shouldn’t have been doing that.”
A teacher at the former Head Start facility Destany Pope, noted they would always need supplies but couldn’t get them. She said they were told there was no money in the budget. “We were supposed to get a Cola raise back in November of 2017, teachers didn’t get that. From November to May of 2018 we just received that two weeks ago. Didn’t find that out until Region Seven came down and told us we were supposed to get a Cola raise so that’s one reason we knew funds were being mismanaged.” Pope added they received two days notice near the end of May that they would be losing their jobs.
Pope said the employees wanted to stress that Head Start is still needed in the local community. “Head start is still a good program. We just want somebody to take it over.” Milam said somebody needs to be found that has a background in Head Start or child care and can devote their time and energy to the youth of the community.
The Other Side of the Story
On the other side of this issue, the executive director of the former Head Start program. LaFarris Risby said they were a new program that had been inherited from an earlier grantee, and problems existed from the beginning, ranging from the day to day running and learning how to operate the program. “As a management from myself and all the managers there was no one that we could really pull together to be honest. I think a part of that was part of the failing of the organization, but there has been no misuse of funds, no mismanagement of funds. We did get written up on a few things and we have also replied to those deficiencies and compliance areas.” Risby added the deficiencies included not having all the procedures in place by the Board and managers, there was a misunderstanding of all the regulations, and that was overwhelming.
Risby also stated she was not sure that the former employees had seen the answers to the report. She confirmed all funds had been accounted for and were not mixed with the private daycare. “That’s correct. No funds were mixed and mingled.” She also stated on that subject, “We didn’t use any Head Start funds!
JC Post recently interviewed the chair of the Board of Directors for the program. Pat Hunter, who reported that the Head Start program recently relinquished its administrative services back to the Region Seven Office of Head Start in Kansas, ending their service in Geary County. The Administration for Children and Families reviewed the program and found multiple areas where the program was deficient or non-compliant.
Hunter said they looked at the deficiencies which were serious because they involved processes. They also looked at the noncompliance issues and talked with region seven personnel that were overseeing the program. “They told us what our options were, we could go through the process of responding and then either we would be terminated or we could relinquish the program.”
Hunter said the Board did its due diligence in looking at the options. “The relinquishing meant that if we relinquish, Region Seven would bring in CDI, which was the previous organization running Head Start and there would be a seamless transition. ” She said based on that advice the Board relinquished the program, but they learned later that CDI was over extended and couldn’t pick up the program in Geary County.
Talks then began with USD 475 to try and obtain help from their early childhood program in accommodating the children that were in Head Start. Hunter said the mutual agreement was that could be done where space is available. “We were not guaranteed spots but they would accept as many children as space was available.” While there is a waiting list that the Head Start children would have to be placed on, officials were optimistic at the time that many of them could be included in the district’s program.
Hunter also has indicated that the deficiencies and noncompliance issues with the Head Start program were all procedural in nature. Based on information provided by Risby one deficiency that was corrected involved a requirement to obtain criminal record checks for all individuals prior to their hiring. Policies and procedures in that area were updated and implemented.