Roddy Stinson: Head Start consultants' pay squeezed out of PCI at last
Web Posted: 10/03/2004 12:00 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News

LINK

A confounding, months-long effort to obtain information about a trio of mental health consultants who receive big checks from the San Antonio Head Start program has finally paid off.

Rosario Cirrincione, director of the Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts Division in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, informed me by letter from his office in Washington:

"The following amounts have been paid by Parent/Child Inc. to each of the following from January 2002 through July 2004:

"Marlene Graf - $163,996

"Dr. Keith Stewart - $172,177

"Brighter Pathway (Paulette Bethel) - $300,302."

Total for the 30-month period: $636,475.

That's about $250,000 per year.

(Mamas, let your babies grow up to provide professional services for Head Start.)

Graf, Stewart and Brighter Pathway came to my attention last April while I was scanning a list of PCI "contractors" receiving "over $50,000" a year.

After several hours of Express-News database research, I concluded that the three contractors provided counseling services for PCI's Head Start program.

For the next three months, I attempted to obtain information about their pay, their Head Start responsibilities and their professional qualifications - first from Graf, Stewart and Bethel, then from PCI officials and finally from the city's Department of Community Initiatives, which monitors Head Start expenditures.

All of the attempts failed. (See Aug. 5 column, "Head Start roadblocks continue to impede spending probe.")

An appeal to Head Start officials in Washington started a snail's-pace process that ultimately forced PCI to provide, via Rosario Cirrincione, the pay information cited above and the three consultants' contracts and résumés.

According to those documents:

Marlene Graf, Paulette Bethel and six other counselors - Maria Piñon, Susan Clifford, Diana Lincoln, Leslie Ann Stancoven, Bernadette Suarez and Elisa Rebolloso - are licensed by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors.

Dr. Keith Stewart is licensed by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and has authored articles on special education and mental health.

Graf, Bethel, et al. are paid $45 an hour "to provide direct mental health services to the agency's children, families and staff."

Stewart provides mental health services for PCI's "children, families and staff," including "in-depth diagnostic evaluation observations, diagnosis, prognosis and recommendations for referred PCI enrollees."

He is paid $75 for each "evaluation," $35 for each "behavior plan" and $20 for each "ARD" (Admission, Review and Dismissal session).

The PCI documents shed little light on one obvious question:

Why do PCI's 3-, 4-and 5-year-olds need $250,000 worth of professional counseling a year?

If the answer is: Because preschoolers from low-income families have considerable mental health problems ...

Why isn't the quarter of a million dollars used (as it is in public school districts) to hire on-staff counselors with age-appropriate expertise in preschool care?

Related questions:

What process did PCI use to determine that the outside contractors had age-appropriate expertise?

Was a competitive process used to select the contractors? If "no," why not?

Somebody has the answers to those questions.

The answers could even be persuasive and assuring.

But as long as PCI's contractors evade media scrutiny ...

As long as PCI's executives make stonewalling their preferred response and grudgingly supply answers only under the threat of federal reprimand ...

And as long as the City Hallers who monitor $45 million in annual Head Start spending cower before PCI's brass ...

Inquiring newspapermen, the tax-paying public and, more seriously, the families of Head Start's young charges will remain in the dark about a multitude of principal and pivotal child-development decisions, designs and day-in, day-out PCI doings.

To contact Roddy Stinson, call (210) 250-3155 or e-mail rstinson@express-news.net. His column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Roddy Stinson: Heat Start audit sullies S.A. in halls of Congress
San Antonio Express-News, September 19, 2004

What a revoltin' situation:

"WASHINGTON, D.C. - An independent federal audit has exposed significant financial abuse and mismanagement at a San Antonio-based Head Start operation. ...

"Among the abuses brought to light by the independent audit:

"Federal Head Start funds meant for children and teachers are instead being used to pay excessive salaries to top executives."

- From a Sept. 16 news release issued by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, citing an audit by the Office of the Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

The unholy use of money by City Hall's longtime Head Start contractor, Parent/Child Inc. (PCI), has resulted in San Antonio's name being sullied in the halls of Congress.

Rubbing salt into the Alamo City wound is the fact that the stigma could have been avoided.

For the past 13 months, news stories and columns in the Express-News have repeatedly reported the severely skewed, executive-rich salary structure at PCI. And just as repeatedly, San Antonio City Hallers have looked the other way.

Only three weeks ago, Mayor Ed Garza and The Council That Listens Only To God voted to throw $44.6 million at PCI with no stipulation to fix the pay-disparity problem.

Their version of the Almighty apparently has no concern for underpaid teachers and poverty-burdened classroom aides.

Incidentally, the aides - who in many cases make less than $7 an hour - weren't included in the federal audit, which examined only executive/teacher salaries.

So PCI's bottom-rung workers - including a lot of single moms - remain at the mercy of the mayor, the council and city staffers, who seem remarkably unconcerned about them.

The City Hallers even disagreed with the federal inspector's recommendation that PCI bring teacher wages in line with "the minimum amount required for public school classroom teachers within the state of Texas."

In the city's response to the audit, Department of Community Initiatives Director Dennis Campa argued that Head Start teachers should not be paid the same as public schoolteachers.

The inspector was not amused:

"We continue to believe that the City of San Antonio should consider bringing PCI's teacher salaries for both degreed and non-degreed teachers more in line with the entry-level salaries paid to degreed and non-degreed teachers."

That's a nice thought, but ...

PCI CEO Blanche Russ-Glover, the architect, builder and $206,000-salaried benefactor of the agency's lopsided pay structure, has shown little interest in correcting the pay inequities. And members of the PCI board of directors, who have blithely watched the inequities worsen over the years, appear to be too intimidated by Russ-Glover to effect change.

It's possible that the Office of the Inspector General will force PCI officials and their City Hall enablers to narrow the executive/teacher pay gap. But that won't help classroom aides and other underpaid PCI employees.

Their welfare is dependent on the whims of the mayor and City Council, who to date have shown no compassion for them.

There was a time when local advocates for the poor and powerless - e.g., Communities Organized for Public Service and Metro Alliance - would have pressured City Hall to improve the pay of impoverished PCI workers.

But those "champions" have either disappeared or sold their spiritual birthright for a mess of political potage and can no longer be counted on to fight for justice and equity.

PCI's bottom-rung workers have, at best, one ray of hope.

Sometime this month, Mayor Garza and The Council That Listens Only To God will appoint members to the brand-new, PCI-overseeing Head Start Commission.

Maybe the appointees will have consciences.

And bow to a more compassionate deity.

LETTER summarizing concerns, from the Department of Health and Human Services

Independent auditors' report

Roddy Stinson: Essential forms 'missing' from S.A. Head Start files
San Antonio Express-News, April 18, 2004

"Finding 4: DCI staff ... examined a total of 58 client files at 10 randomly selected Head Start centers. Twenty files were missing at least one essential form (e.g. parental acknowledgement form, current immunization record, income eligibility statement, etc.)."
- From a "monitoring review" of Parent/Child Inc. by the city's Department of Community Initiatives

Since last August, in various news reports and columns, the Express-News has detailed problematic goings-on at Parent/Child Inc., the nonprofit organization that the city of San Antonio has delegated to operate the local Head Start program for poor preschoolers.
Last week, the city's Department of Community Initiatives (DCI), which monitors the $44.7 million operation, issued the findings of a review that the department conducted in the wake of the Express-News revelations.

Any objective reading of those findings reveals the clear source of the problems at Parent/Child.

In two words: City Hall.

In several words: City Manager Terry Brechtel and her staff, Mayor Ed Garza and the City Council.

They are ultimately responsible for (1) determining how the $44.7 million is spent and (2) maintaining the integrity and effectiveness of the child-care program.

City Hall's implicit abrogation of those responsibilities is easily read between the lines of the monitoring report.

Astonishing case in point:

On Page 8 of the report, DCI reviewers revealed that 20 of 58 randomly selected "client" files were missing "essential" documents.

That is 34.4 percent.

In 2002-2003, Parent/Child enrolled 6,789 children in its San Antonio Head Start centers.

If the randomly selected files are representative of all Parent/Child files, there are serious documental questions about a staggering number of "clients" (34.4 percent of 6,789 is 2,335).

That finding leads to one particularly worrisome question:

How many of the 2,335 clients have not produced income eligibility statements?

One group of San Antonians who would like to know the answer: Owners/operators of San Antonio's private child-care centers.

Several of those entrepreneurs have contacted this column in recent months to complain about Head Start.

Two examples:

"I own a home-child-care. Several of my (former) parents - who own nice homes and drive new cars and have well-paying jobs - have put their kids in the Head Start program. So by no means are they poor.

"Meanwhile, I barely make ends meet."

(Personal note: While visiting a local Head Start center last fall, I observed a "client" and a woman who appeared to be the youngster's mother drive up in a late-model Ford Expedition.)

"(The city) is running us all out of town," one particularly unhappy businesswoman said. "Why should tax money be used to compete against me? How can I compete with a giant?"

Are such complaints legitimate? Do the child-care entrepreneurs have personal axes to grind or are they being hammered unfairly?

The DCI findings suggest that, at best, those are open questions.

Yet city officials have shown zero desire to come up with definitive answers.

To the contrary, the unidentified author of DCI's review inserted his/her own vague alibi for the missing documents:

"Some circumstances, such as with a new enrollee or re-entry into the program, may not have allowed sufficient time for certain records to have been provided and filed."

Of such is the Kingdom of Sloppy City Hall Monitoring.

In an attempt to nudge city staffers into performing more responsibly and professionally, I e-mailed DCI officials on Thursday:

"Doesn't the fact that one of every three files was incomplete cause great concern? If so, that concern is well hidden in the report. Why would this not be sufficient cause to audit (all of the Parent/Child files) to determine how many are incomplete?"

As of late Friday afternoon, no answers had been provided.

Stay tuned to find out if they are ever provided - and if those answers include any new City Hall excuses, explanations, exculpations and/or exonerative whitewashes.

To contact Roddy Stinson, call (210) 250-3155 or e-mail rstinson@express-news.net. His column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

Head Start checks often miss abuses
John Tedesco, San Antonio Express-News, April 18, 2004

LINK

On an early spring day last year, federal reviewers who spent a week at San Antonio's largest day care service, the Head Start-funded Parent/Child Inc., issued a rosy report that lavished praise on the nonprofit program.

There was just one problem: The report was full of holes. Nowhere did it mention the teacher who smacked children on the head with a spoon. Or the worker who held a boy's arms while ordering a girl to slap him. Or the teacher's aide who called a child "stupid and retarded."

That's because Head Start's safety record never has been fully scrutinized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees hundreds of organizations that care for impoverished children.

Head Start, a $6 billion federal initiative that nurtures and educates 900,000 children nationwide, is a lifeline for families in poverty. But federal reviewers who are supposed to be watchdogs for those families do their inspections with big blind spots.

A federal review of Head Start programs nationwide conducted every three years focuses on financial records, lesson plans and other perceived indicators of how effective and well run the programs are.

But reviewers are not required to check state inspections of Head Start programs that might reflect abuse or practices that endanger children.

In Bexar County, that bureaucratic disconnect is at the root of a disturbing paradox: A star Head Start program holds the distinction of being a top violator of Texas' day-care rules.

If the federal review team in San Antonio had asked to see state inspection reports, it would have found that Parent/Child Inc., one of the country's largest Head Start providers, had flunked scores of state day-care inspections.

The country's top Head Start administrator said reports of child endangerment would be important in measuring the effectiveness of organizations like Parent/Child Inc.

"But is there a requirement that they report incidents to us? No, there is no specific regulation that I'm aware of," said Windy Hill, associate commissioner in charge of the Head Start Bureau in Washington.

"I believe it would be absolutely important to have that information on file and readily accessible," Hill said. But it's never been a priority at Health and Human Services, which awarded $45 million to Parent/Child Inc. last year.

"My guess is, this is information that is generally maintained in the licensing files, certainly in Texas, for each agency," Hill said. "Those licensing files are fairly thick for an agency the size of San Antonio, and that's a lot of work to review and to look at each file. I'm not sure how the review teams would address this issue."

No questions asked

Parent/Child Inc. is a large nonprofit program that's a free teacher, nanny and nurse for more than 6,700 poor children in San Antonio.
In its March 2003 review, the federal team found Parent/Child Inc. was "in full compliance" with all Head Start standards, and compared its efficiency to any Fortune 500 company.

The team followed a 250-page manual to examine financial records, lesson plans and other aspects of the program.

But there were shortcomings in the review. Records show that Parent/Child Inc., not the government, decided which of its 87 day-care centers the team should visit.

Blanche Russ-Glover, executive director of Parent/Child Inc., made those decisions and updated trustees in closed board meetings, where members are told to keep all information confidential, according to the board's minutes.

In interviews, teachers at Parent/Child Inc. said new equipment had been transported from centers that weren't scheduled to be inspected to those that were, and staff members were instructed not to air dirty laundry about their employer.

"We were told to only say positive things," said a teacher who asked to remain anonymous, saying she didn't want to get fired. "That was the word that came down. This was told to everybody, to all the teachers and all the staff."

All Head Start programs put their best foot forward when it's review time. But the steps taken by Parent/Child Inc. caught Hill off guard.

"Any agency who is conducting business in that fashion is certainly not adhering to the letter of regulations, or the intent," said Hill, who ran the Cen-Tex Head Start program in Bastrop before she took the Washington job in 2002. "Certainly, we would like to believe when we conduct a review it is with an air of partnership with the agency."

Russ-Glover said she was asked to pick centers to be reviewed, but once the team arrived, its members chose to spontaneously inspect day cares that weren't on the list.

"They went to either four or five centers that had not been identified," Russ-Glover said. "And if they had wanted to go to all of them, it would have been OK with us."

Russ-Glover denied issuing orders for employees to bite their tongues in the review team's presence.

Hill acknowledged Parent/Child Inc. had a say in the site-selection process.

"One of the things that grantees do, especially if we have a lot of ground to cover, they try to suggest and provide us with some recommendations on where to travel to maximize the time on the ground," Hill said. "Certainly we can't get to 80 centers in a week. So then logistically, we try to map out what makes sense."

Could those suggestions lead review teams away from poorly performing day cares?

"I don't think I would disagree with that," Hill answered.

Serious cases

Since January 2002, Parent/Child broke 550 regulations at 81 of its day-care centers, according to enforcement data compiled by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
While most violations reflected minor errors, such as missing paperwork, some were worrisome.

Before the federal review team's arrival March 3, 2003, state regulators had cited Parent/Child Inc. for understaffing classrooms, leaving children unsupervised, and storing bottles of bleach and chemicals within reach of kids.

One boy was observed napping with a paperclip inserted halfway into his nostril.

Some teachers yelled at children, handled them roughly, or hit them, according to state inspection records and internal Parent/Child documents. The incidents were alleged by co-workers or witnessed by inspectors in unannounced visits.

"One staff (member) yelled at a child and grabbed him by arm," an inspector wrote of a Dec. 12, 2002, visit to a new child care center on West Hutchins Place. "I observed another child who was left to cry unattended ... neither of the teachers in his room were trying to calm him."

That month in another day care, an inspector learned of a teacher's aide who called a child "stupid and retarded."

Parent/Child keeps its own records of abuse allegations that aren't reviewed by federal officials.

On March 6, 2002, day-care worker Terri Lee Stowe walked into a classroom and saw a bizarre scene.

A teacher's aide was kneeling behind a crying boy, gripping his arms and giving harsh instructions to a girl, Stowe wrote in a memo that day to her bosses.

"Slap him again," the day-care worker ordered the girl, "only harder." The girl struck her classmate, but took no pleasure in it; she was crying, too.

"What is going on?" Stowe demanded. Her colleague said she was tired of the boy's beating up other kids and getting away with it.

Two days later, Stowe said she witnessed the same aide yell at kids in frustration and kick the boy who had been held. The employee denied the allegations but resigned as Parent/Child investigated the incidents.

Russ-Glover said Stowe's earlier memo didn't surface until the March 8 incident, and the accused worker was sent home immediately.

A year later, on March 7, 2003, day-care supervisor Mary Peña was watching kids wash their hands for lunch when she heard children screaming from a nearby classroom.

Peña turned and saw two boys crying. A teacher was standing next to them, gripping a spoon, Peña later told her bosses.

"I saw her hit three children with the spoon, and they would cry and hold their heads in their hands," Peña wrote in a memo. One boy tried to escape by darting between a table and bookshelf and covering his head.

Russ-Glover said the program aggressively investigated each incident and fired any employee who hurt children.

Several employees, such as the teacher accused of smacking children with the spoon, wrote in statements to Parent/Child that the alleged incidents never happened. They were all fired or resigned amid investigations of their conduct.

Russ-Glover noted state officials could shut down troubled day-care centers. In two years, the state hasn't closed a Parent/Child facility, although one center was put on probationary status.

Ten centers are on stringent monitoring schedules because of past violations.

The review team never asked about the safety infractions, Russ-Glover said, nor is it required to.

"If they would ask for them, we would give them," she said.

Federal team members might have read recent state inspections posted in each day care and publicly available on the Internet, but the final report makes no mention of those documents.

Politically, the Bush administration would like to hand control of Head Start to the states.

Regional Head Start offices, such as the one in Dallas that oversees Parent/Child Inc., are seen by some in Washington as an unnecessary expense, and too uncritical of the programs they supervise.

Head Start's defenders say the Bush administration's real agenda is to wipe out a valuable social program, one of the last vestiges of LBJ's War on Poverty.

The National Head Start Association said government officials are on a witch-hunt to depict Head Start as a troubled program, and last week the association demanded Hill's resignation.

Calls made to Carlton B. Reid, a federal program manager in Dallas who signed off on the Parent/Child report, were not returned last week. Other members of the review team didn't return messages or their names weren't fully identified in the review.

Playing doctor

Some Head Start parents believe Parent/Child isn't candid with them when things go wrong at a child-care center. On May 5, 2003, three months after the review team's visit, a child at a day care on Southeast Military Drive reached through a fence near a playground and grabbed a used syringe on the ground.

As a small group of children played doctor with the needle and poked themselves, their teacher, Christina Hernandez, was busy working on a lesson plan, according to an internal investigation by Parent/Child Inc.

Another teacher spotted the children at about 9:40 a.m. and alerted Hernandez, but the investigation found that day-care employees waited three hours to notify parents and seek medical attention for the children.

Missteps and missed phone calls caused the delay.

Hernandez's supervisor, Mary Ann Solis, called a health-care coordinator at Parent/Child Inc., who in turn tried calling her boss for advice but got no answer. The coordinator, Patsy Perez, turned to other duties, believing no kids had been poked.

By 10:30 a.m., with no word from Perez, Solis left to get a pair of eyeglasses fixed, thinking the situation must not be too serious, she later wrote in her own synopsis of the incident.

Solis' boss, Oralia Avina, wrote she thought the situation was under control and left at 12:30 p.m.

About a half-hour later, Perez saw a note on her desk and remembered she was supposed to call Solis back. She told Solis that for safety's sake, they should notify parents and ask to which hospital they wanted to take children.

Health officials later assured the public the children were OK; Russ-Glover said last week that the children were hospitalized "immediately."

But parents were outraged not only by the incident but by the day care's delayed reaction and notification of families.

Solis, one of two employees who eventually were fired, blamed the incident on a sluggish bureaucracy.

"Had I seen a poke or dot of blood," she said, "I would have put them in the car and taken them to the hospital, because that's who I am."

A few months earlier, federal reviewers had commended Parent/Child Inc.

The commendation was for how effectively the program communicates with families and the community.

jtedesco@express-news.net


Head Start leader targeted
John Tedesco, San Antonio Express-News, April 14, 2004

The National Head Start Association on Tuesday demanded the resignation of Bush administration official Windy Hill, a vocal critic of some Head Start programs whose own nonprofit group was faulted in past fiscal reviews.

The association said it found documents that detailed troubling problems at Cen-Tex Family Services Inc., a Head Start provider in Bastrop where Hill was executive director before she took charge of the U.S. Head Start Bureau in January 2002.

By releasing the reports, the association said it was exposing a double standard among administration officials and Republicans in Congress who have launched "relentless and demoralizing attacks" against Head Start.

"Windy Hill has been at war against Head Start grantees," association President Sarah Greene said.

The unusual demand deepened a rift between Head Start programs that receive federal money to care for 900,000 kids, and government leaders who claim Head Start would be better left to the states.

"It's a pretty major thing," said James Mitchell, director of the Institute of Child and Family Studies at Texas Tech University. "They're basically calling her a criminal."

A spokesman with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, said Hill wouldn't comment on the association's demands or accusations, and instead released a statement.

"Windy Hill has worked tirelessly to improve both the quality and the effectiveness of the Head Start program," the statement read. "It is sad, therefore, that the National Head Start Association would make such a mean-spirited and unwarranted attack on her integrity."

The association filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the government and obtained copies of an audit and a review letter that raised concerns about Cen-Tex. Those documents were released Tuesday.

The audit, conducted by the Austin firm Lockart, Atchley & Associates, examined Cen-Tex's books during the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2002.

Auditors found 10 fiscal deficiencies, including "substantial" bonuses paid to the former executive director of Cen-Tex without proper documentation. Hill wasn't identified by name.

The bonuses weren't channeled through the payroll system. Instead, the funds were tapped from an expense account and weren't included in the employee's W-2 tax form.

Because of sloppy record keeping, Cen-Tex also overdrew $141,000 in grant funds that exceeded Cen-Tex's needs, the audit found. The Head Start association says Cen-Tex was ordered to return the funds.

The audit noted that Cen-Tex was taking steps to fix the problems.

Calls to Cen-Tex weren't answered Tuesday.

The federal government also reviewed Cen-Tex, according to an Oct. 31, 2002, letter from a Health and Human Services official to Clinton M. Wright, chairman of Cen-Tex's board of directors.

That review found several problems, among them: Employees violated the group's vacation policy and racked up more hours than they were allowed.

One employee who wasn't identified accumulated 634 hours, or more than 15 weeks.

Greene said Hill was that employee.

The letter doesn't give a time frame of the federal review.

President Johnson started Head Start in 1965, and its mission of educating young children often has been buffeted by politics.

The association's demands for Hill's ouster were made on the eve of the planned release of a government survey of Head Start salaries.

Recent media reports, including articles in the San Antonio Express-News, found that some executive directors of Head Start programs earn six-figure salaries and handsome perks.

Locally, Blanche Russ-Glover, the founder of San Antonio's Head Start program, earned nearly $230,000 in pay, benefits, and a car allowance for her Cadillac Deville last year, tax records show.

jtedesco@express-news.net

Thursday, November 27, 2003
Lawmakers call for federal audit of Head Start
By Associated Press, The Detroit News

WASHINGTON -- Spurred on by allegations of financial abuse, four House and Senate leaders have asked government auditors to examine the Head Start preschool program before Congress moves to reauthorize the program.

In a letter to the General Accounting Office, the Republican leaders of four congressional education panels requested a review of the procedures Head Start uses to monitor its agencies around the country.

"The Head Start establishment has a growing credibility problem," said Rep. John Boehner, chairman of the House education committee. "The information in this report will help teachers, parents and taxpayers know the extent of the problem and should ultimately help Congress agree on some solution."

Recent questions have arisen about possible funding improprieties at Head Start agencies, including an FBI investigation of ineligible families using a Head Start program in Las Vegas, and the payment of at least $814,142 in salary over three years to the executive director of a Kansas City area program that runs 11 Head Start centers.

Some lawmakers have suggested the problems should trigger an overhaul of the early childhood program, and they have suggested more state control over Head Start.

The letter was signed by Boehner, R-Ohio, Sen. Education Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del.

A pilot proposal to allow as many as eight states to manage Head Start is hotly contested and sparked bitter debate in the House, which passed its own Head Start bill in July by just one vote. The proposal was in the House bill but is not in the version moving through the Senate.

On the Net:

Head Start Bureau:

July, 2003: Is there enough oversight and accountability for Head Start Programs and Faith-based groups at the receiving end of federal funds? Obviously, no, there is not.

July 28, 2003
Head Start Bill Passes House
By Stuart Shepard, correspondent, Family News In Focus

Faith-based groups may benefit from the new Head Start bill passed by the House.

By a single vote, the House of Representatives passed a Head Start program that includes some encouraging language for faith-based groups.

The House bill, which passed 217-216, contains changes that would affect every Head Start program in every state. Parker Hamilton, with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said the legislation would benefit nearly a million disadvantaged children.

"(There will be) an increased focus on academics, on cognitive development, on making sure that disadvantaged children are entering kindergarten ready to learn," Hamilton said.

The bill also includes employment protections for faith-based organizations, which make up 5 percent of Head Start providers.

"We're hopeful that by restoring the civil rights protections of Head Start providers, that more faith-based organizations will want to participate," Hamilton said.

The Head Start program itself is still controversial among many conservatives because of the cost and questions about its effectiveness.

"We certainly have reservations about it to begin with, and the fact that this was increasing its budget by quite a bit raises some concerns on our end," said Tom McClusky, director of government affairs with the Family Research Council.

McClusky added, however, that it's definitely good news that faith-based groups would still be able to make employment decisions in line with their beliefs. He thinks the protection for faith-based organizations might actually lead to an increase in the number of such groups that function as Head Start providers.

"That 5 percent might actually grow (into) more faith-based organizations, which usually have been found to be the most successful organizations in the different programs that they run," McClusky said.

He pointed out that no Democrat voted in favor of the bill. It now goes to the Senate where McClusky says the fight over the protections for faith-based groups will be "tough, if not impossible." The version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives has the backing of the Bush Administration.