ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607160006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY ELLEN VERDU
THE VIRGINIA Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs was shut down at the end of June - amid a cloud of innuendo and bizarre accusations by its George Allen-appointed administrator and members.
The final attack was by people who do not believe government can have a role supporting working families and their young children. It only serves to illustrate how much the council had achieved in its short tenure - and how much Virginia's working families have lost as a result of the dismantling of these programs under Gov. Allen's administration.
The council, established under Gov. Gerald Baliles, was designed to bring together everyone concerned with early-childhood education and child day-care to address collaboratively the needs of working families and young children.
By law, the council crossed the arenas of education, economic development and social welfare, and council members represented parents, local governments, corporate and small-business interests, early-childhood experts, Head Start, public schools, public welfare and child-care providers.
In its first four years, using federal Child Care and Development Block Grant funds, the council:
Established locally operated Head Start programs in previously unserved communities and community-designed child-care programs in many localities where no formal day care had existed.
Developed programs for low-interest loans for child-care providers to expand and improve their services, grants to improve the safety and quality of family and center-based child care, vigorous hands-on technical assistance for corporations and local governments seeking to address the child-care needs of working parents, and scholarships for child-care providers to improve their expertise.
Supported exemplary child-care programs, which in turn offered technical assistance to other child-care providers.
Established "wrap-around" child-care programs for Head Start families, so low-income working parents could enroll their children in Head Start programs for a full day.
Assisted in establishing comprehensive education programs for at-risk 4-year-olds, an initiative of the 1994 General Assembly, and in the overhaul of child-care regulations, passed by the 1993 assembly.
At the assembly's request, the council designed the pilot project for parent education that came to be known as the Centers for Families That Work. Believing parents are ultimately responsible for choosing and monitoring the care setting for their children, and having heard from scores of parents who said they lacked access to consumer information to help in this role, the legislative Commission on Early Childhood and Child Day Care asked the council to use some of its federal grant to design an effective, accessible program to provide information for parents.
These centers were to mirror child-care resource-and-referral services that some employers have been making available to their workers for more than 20 years. They were also to test a voucher system enabling low-income working families who qualify for public child-care subsidies to purchase services from any qualified child-care provider.
The Allen appointees took over the council just as the centers were being started. The new director, Elizabeth Ruppert, created a baseless controversy over them. It served to mask the fact that the council under her administration not only canceled this parent-education program but also dismantled nearly every other council initiative in support of Virginia's working families and their children.
The Allen-appointed council's last hurrah was a report that falsely and egregiously maligns the former staff and members of the council. This confusing, bizarre document raises charges of national conspiracies supposedly involving Yale University, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Association for Resource and Referral Centers, and other citizen and parent advocates.
The report eerily mirrors Ruppert's 1990 writings, in a publication of Phyllis Schlafly's right-wing Eagle Forum, about "Swedish-style middle-class welfare." Included were charges of national conspiracies involving Wellesley College and these same professional organizations. The council report and the letter accompanying it are rife with similar references to "shadow governments," and alleged intentions to infect young children with "radical ideologies" in settings "free of the supervision of their parents" and to "impose a particular ideological world view upon children."
The tireless efforts of countless Virginia parents and professionals on behalf of young children were turned into a ludicrous description of intrigue more fit for an Oliver Stone movie than a state document. Furthermore, by ignoring the processes and procedures that agencies are required by regulation to follow when they suspect fraud and abuse, Ruppert and her colleagues have made sure their allegations will not receive the scrutiny of appropriate state and federal authorities - scrutiny that would have determined the allegations to be without merit.
Spending state funds to pursue this sort of ideological witch-hunt should concern everyone. The real tragedy is that this report is a smokescreen behind which Ruppert's council has hidden its own actions. The last two years of this agency's existence apparently have been spent in pursuits of this type, while nearly every program in the state that supported working families and young children disappeared.
I am proud to have been associated with the council, first as a member and then as director. Never have I worked with a more talented or professional group of staff and citizens. We listened carefully to what communities and individual citizens had to say. In an era of real fiscal limitations, we gave substantial support to initiatives in more than 100 Virginia localities. We created and sponsored programs that were prototypes for other states and that received national attention.
The end of the council does not mean an end to the needs of working parents for affordable, high-quality child care. Employers and economic developers still care whether child care is available for a stable workforce. Welfare reform will mean little if children are languishing unsupervised or in substandard child-care settings.
Perhaps Virginia's next governor will recognize and rekindle the legitimate role that government can have in helping working families, whatever their economic circumstances, to secure the best environments and services for their children.
Mary Ellen Verdu of Salem is former director of the Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs.
LENGTH: Long : 119 linesby CNB