THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160535
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 99 lines
Two letters Virginia officials sent to the federal government in June rejected a five-year, $750,000 grant to expand Head Start programs and other services for low-income children and their families.
The refusal of funds would have made Virginia the only state in the country to turn down the money.
But the commissioner of the state Department of Social Services, Clarence Carter, is now saying the two strongly worded letters were sent without authorization of the governor and were completely erroneous.
``Those letters were never shared with me or the governor,'' Carter said Thursday. ``We're proceeding with the grant application and we will meet the Tuesday deadline.''
The two letters rejecting the Head Start funds were sent by Elizabeth Ruppert and John Elson, both of whom worked for the Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs.
That council went out of existence at the end of June, through sunset legislation passed by the General Assembly. The council was charged with administering federal grants to improve day care in Virginia.
Three days before the agency was phased out, executive director Elizabeth Ruppert wrote a letter to David Lett, who coordinates the Head Start State Collaboration Project for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She said she was ``authorizing the elimination'' of the program in Virginia.
A second letter, written the same day, was sent by John Elson, who also worked for the council. Both letters were typed on Commonwealth of Virginia letterhead stationery.
Elson, who now works for the state Department of Social Services, refused to comment on the issue Thursday, and Ruppert, who no longer works for the state, could not be reached.
The letters cite several reasons for rejecting the grant, with the main one being the involvement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Ruppert and Elson said in the letters they believe the national organization pushes a liberal agenda on the state's child-care system.
Of particular concern to Elson was the fact that the Federal Head Start Bureau mailed a book called the ``Anti-Bias Curriculum'' to every state Head Start program in 1992. The book is published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
The book, which encourages diversity, includes a reading list of children's books. For instance, one book is about a child in a single-parent household, another about a child whose father is in prison, and another about a girl who lives with three women instead of a traditional father-mother family. Other books talked about non-traditional roles of women.
Elson wrote that few Virginia parents would ``so avidly teach alternative lifestyles and so aggressively promote multicultural values over family traditions.''
Further, both Elson and Ruppert said they doubt that collaboration between state and federal governments would be beneficial. In fact, they opposed the intrusion of the federal government, calling it ``antithetical'' to state sovereignty.
The letters caused a flurry of activity and a barrage of angry phone calls Thursday as they circulated the fax machines of state legislators, social services officials, reporters and the lieutenant governor.
Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer, who said he got his first look at the letters on Wednesday night, is holding a press conference today to get to the bottom of the issue.
``I saw the letters, and I was horrified and angered that the governor and his administration would turn down these grants, and turn their backs on the poor children of Virginia,'' Beyer said Thursday night.
``We have spent most of the day trying to track this down. If the administration is restoring the grants, that's great, but my first question is, `Who is in charge?' These were senior people responsible for making decisions. My mission is to call on the governor so he can tell the people of Virginia where he stands on Head Start.''
As of 4 p.m. Thursday, Lett was operating under the assumption the state had turned down the collaboration grant.
``It's ironic, because Virginia was one of the first 10 states that were awarded the funds five years ago,'' said Lett, whose Philadelphia office oversees the grants in six states. ``We were very surprised they turned it down. We look at it as a lost opportunity.''
Lett said the funds encourage collaboration of services among three entities - the federal government, the state government and local Head Start providers. The funding for the next five years would have targeted Head Start coordination with several areas: health services, welfare reform programs, child-care services and education.
Greg Crist, spokesman for the governor's office, asked that copies of the letters from Ruppert and Elson be faxed to him. Late Thursday he said the letters did not have the support of the governor. In fact, he said, the governor has indicated he will approve the grant application.
However, there is one area of Head Start funding that will change.
Ruppert informed Lett in a June 15 letter that the state was pulling out of a program that funded 11 Head Start programs in Dinwiddie, Waverly, Halifax, Augusta County, Colonial Beach, Culpeper, Leesburg, Fredericksburg, Cumberland, Chatham and West Point. Those areas did not have any Head Start programs before 1992.
Since 1992, the state and the federal government have pooled money to fund Head Start for about 750 children in those areas. The federal government has been funding $3.5 million, and the state $1 million. But Lett said the state has refused to pay its $1 million for the coming fiscal year. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
THE GRANT'S PURPOSE
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm] by CNB