ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 22, 1996 TAG: 9608220024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
PERHAPS the head of Virginia's by-then eviscerated Council on Child Day Care can be forgiven for having presumed the authority, back in June, to eliminate Virginia's Head Start State Collaboration Project and to decline the federal funds that go with it.
In doing so, Elizabeth Ruppert was only mirroring an antipathy toward the federal government and a fear of some shadowy liberal conspiracy that Gov. George Allen has often invoked, most recently in his absurd refusal of federal Goals 2000 money.
In this case, however, neither the governor nor the commissioner of the state's Department of Social Services had approved - or apparently even seen - letters from council officials withdrawing the state from the project.
The council's executive director overstepped her power, it seems, in refusing to seek the five-year, $750,000 grant, and Virginia now has applied for the funds. The money is to be used for a worthwhile purpose: to help coordinate the work of Head Start and state and local agencies to extend Virginia's capacity to serve children in need.
In the bizarre view of the Virginia council's Allen-appointed executive director, the purpose was more sinister. Days before her agency was shut down at the administration's behest, she wrote federal officials that Virginia was eliminating the program because participation violated the state's sovereignty, and the project was "the medium through which large, private and highly controversial child care organizations are included" in the state's Head Start planning efforts.
The resignation letter of Virginia's Head Start State Collaboration director, John Elson, clarified the nature of the perceived threat: the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. Their involvement in the project, he wrote, "forces the exclusion of parents, intruding upon their rights to instill their values and their traditions into their children."
Say what?
In fact, both associations are leading organizations in the early-childhood field, and Head Start centers may choose to use some of their resources and expertise. Some of their stuff favors tolerance for diversity. But neither they nor any federal agency mandates a Head Start curriculum. That is decided locally, by a Head Start management team and parents of the children enrolled.
Anyone familiar with Head Start knows that one of its cornerstones is parental involvement.
Before her appointment to oversee child care programs in Virginia, Ruppert had written about a nefarious conspiracy by early-childhood educators to impose Scandinavian-style socialism in America. Her paranoid rhetoric finally became too much even for the Allen administration. After all, making every federal bureaucrat into a bogey man risks dollars - and credibility.
Even so, it should be remembered that Allen appointed Ruppert in the first place. The greatest risks, meantime, are borne by Virginia's at-risk children and their families who need child care.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB