Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 27, 1995 TAG: 9502270081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On Feb. 6, a national study reported dismal news about child-care centers across the country.
One in eight children was found to be in a poor-quality setting where health and safety were threatened. Only one in seven centers was rated as "good."
That same week, members of Virginia's General Assembly considered legislation that would abolish the Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs, a state agency that has worked to enhance the quality of child care throughout the state.
The irony was troubling to some child-care professionals, who had celebrated the council's efforts.
And with child care a crucial component of welfare reform efforts, they wondered about the rationale. To dismantle the council, on one hand, and on the other talk about moving Virginians, many of them single mothers, off welfare and into training or jobs - that was baffling, they said.
And why, they asked, would such a move be proposed when Virginia repeatedly has been cited for its poor performance in providing its youngest residents with proper day care?
"There has never been a time when we've been more desperate for child-care services for families in the state of Virginia," said Ann Francis, director of resource and referral at Virginia Tech. "It's such a tragedy, this happening right at a time when we're seeing the largest need and the lowest quality."
The council was on the hit list of Gov. George Allen's strike force on governmental reform. The strike force recommended that the council be eliminated and its functions placed in the Department of Social Services. Doing so was seen as helping to improve efficiency in state government and reduce costs.
A bill was introduced this session by Del. M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, to accomplish precisely what the strike force recommended. House Bill 2554 proposed abolishing the council and shifting its function to the Department of Social Services.
"We feel like it would provide a kind of seamless system for service delivery," said Bill Flanagan, Cox's legislative aide. "You wouldn't have two agencies, but one. We would be able to serve more children that way. And it would save Virginia taxpayers money by consolidating budget functions."
The council was established in the late 1980s, a product of former Gov. Gerald Baliles' administration. The council's function was to plan, coordinate and evaluate all state child day care and early child development programs and to administer federal child care development block grant money, used in part to provide child-care subsidies to low-income working families. This fiscal year, the council has $16.5 million in block grant funds.
The council's use of block grant funding was unique to the country, said Mary Ellen Verdu, former council director. While other states were padding administrative costs with grant funding, Virginia was putting grant money directly into child-care services, she said.
Some block grant money was used to start Head Start programs in several localities. In 1992 - when Verdu, of Salem, was appointed council director - 27 localities did not have a Head Start program. That number has dropped to nine, she said.
"We literally worked with the federal government, matching their money with block grant money to help localities set up Head Start," Verdu said. "The federal government would eventually buy us out, replacing state money with their money. That one thing literally was nationally unique."
The council also put block grant funds into community development, helping Craig County, for example, open its first day-care center last year.
"The council was a real dream come true," Verdu said. "Very few other states have anything like it. It became a model for Georgia, which established a similar council."
Verdu was replaced last July by an Allen appointee, Elizabeth Ruppert. Ruppert's resume includes positions in the child development field, many at the federal level.
During Ruppert's brief tenure, the council staff has dropped from about 14 to three or four. This was before Cox's bill to abolish the council ever was introduced, said Marian Houk, director of the Annandale Christian Community for Action's child-care program, who is a council member.
Suddenly, grant funding for several child-care initiatives was reduced or pulled altogether - not by the federal government but by the council.
Lynn Hill, owner of the Rainbow Riders Childcare Center in Blacksburg, said 1994-95 grant funding that had been used for a program to mentor and assist other New River Valley child-care providers was cut in half.
Rainbow Riders was selected two years ago as one of five model centers statewide to participate in the Model Technical Assistance Mentoring Project, a training project where the child-care center worked with other centers in the New River and Roanoke valleys to develop a comprehensive training plan for people in the child-care field.
"It's a statewide plan to set up professional development procedure for people in early childhood education," Hill said.
For each of the past two years, Rainbow Riders received $80,000. Last fall, Hill was notified that funding would be reduced to $40,000 for fiscal 1994-95.
"It was difficult for recruitment purposes," Hill said. "We had to tell people we weren't going to be able to serve them."
Hill said she called Ruppert's office for explanation. She left a message on Ruppert's voice mail but never got a call back. Days later, she received a grant contract in the mail but no explanation.
Last week, Ruppert said: "We're focusing on services for children, basically into quality of life of the child. We're just looking at that."
A year ago, Roanoke's Council of Community Services announced that it had been selected as one of three sites statewide for a pilot program designed to help working families, regardless of income, locate and select quality child care. Called the Centers for Families that Work, the project also was designed to test a new debit-card voucher system to help low-income parents get around the often cumbersome task of obtaining their child-care subsidies.
This month, Ruppert notified all three sites by letter that the project was dead.
She explained that the council did not follow correct procedures when it initially signed a contract to develop the centers, said Raleigh Campbell, executive director of the Council of Community Services. She cited in her letter some error on the former director's part, he said.
Verdu, that former director, called Ruppert's claim "completely incorrect."
The Centers for Families that Work ``was one of the linchpin programs of the council, thought up by the planning and program committee of the council," Verdu said. "I have no idea what the rationale is for doing this."
Ruppert declined to comment on the decision to pull grant funding from the program, saying only that the matter was under investigation. She would not say by whom or what agency.
Some say Ruppert was appointed simply to carry out Republican wishes - to, bit by bit, abolish the council. Ruppert denies that claim, saying that when she was appointed she knew nothing about any suggestions to abolish the council.
And "I didn't know Governor Allen," she said. "I was not active in past Republican campaigns. I was called because of my expertise in the area."
Ruppert may be out of a job.
Cox's bill died in the Senate Finance Committee a week ago. But conferees added language to the state budget specifying that child-care development block grant money be retained for four federally funded council positions. And use of block grant funding for Head Start and the Centers for Families that Work was to continue.
But no state general fund money would be provided to the council - $625,000 used to cover some of the council's administrative costs, including Ruppert's salary.
So the question remains: What happens to the council? Will it continue operating as originally intended? Or will it exist in name only, its functions carried out by the Department of Social Services?
"The council is still on the books," said Flanagan, Cox's aide. "Whether it will operate out of Social Services, I don't know. There is no Virginia money. Neither the House or the Senate put [state] funds back into it."
There is concern that quality child-care services and early childhood development might not receive the same attention from the Department of Social Services as it had from the council.
"I can't imagine people picking them up under the current environment, with the reduction in staffing," said Bennet Greenberg, executive director of the Action Alliance for Virginia's Children and Youth. "There's nothing in the law to prevent the administration from taking block grant funding and supporting welfare reform activities instead."
Carol Brunty, commissioner of the state Department of Social Services, said the department already contracts with the council to administer the portion of the block grant funding that provides child-care subsidies to low-income working families - and has for years. The department also uses $500,000 in block grant money to provide training, information and scholarships for child-care providers to take community college courses.
"We do a lot of their quality work already," Brunty said. "Yet that seems to be the piece people are most concerned about. I think there is a lot of duplication and confusion.
"We're trying to put everything in one place rather than spread it around."
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB