Pine Ridge Reservation Head Start shut down

Last Updated: Saturday, April 9, 2005 11:25 PM MDT

By Jomay Steen. Journal Staff Writer

PINE RIDGE - Twenty-five Head Start programs on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation remain closed going into a fourth week as the Oglala Sioux Tribe scrambles to meet federal requirements.

On March 17, the preschool program sent home 462 children from 25 centers throughout the reservation after financial problems and safety violations shut down the Head Start and Early Head Start centers in all nine districts of the Pine Ridge Reservation, officials said.

Tribal council member Will Peters said the Head Start Bureau in Washington, D.C., closed the centers as a result of ongoing financial problems related to the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

A March 31 memo from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the tribe said the Head Start Bureau in Washington suspended the program for at least 30 days because of problems with financial management of the OST Head Start program. At that time, all Head Start and Early Head Start employees were suspended from their duties, and the centers officially closed.

The memo said the tribe must comply in three areas before the head start centers could reopen, Peters, who serves as the tribe's education committee chairman, said.

The tribe must provide a record of accounts for the program, demonstrate that it had sufficient nonfederal working capital for a 30-day period and demonstrate that the tribe was no longer at risk of losing its Head Start programs.

"I'm saddened by what our communities have to go through under these circumstances," Peters said Friday.

A week before the memo, Head Start program director Alberta Miller sent a letter March 25 to parents stating that the Head Start program had been temporarily suspended until further notice. She wrote that "the basis for the closure lies in the fact that telephone service has been disconnected to the majority of the Head Start and Early Head Start centers across the reservation and constitutes a safety violation."

Gayla Adams of Kyle said that many families in her community were upset about the closing.

"This program does make a difference in our children. They're interacting with other kids and getting classroom experiences," Adams said.

People in the Kyle community have had to miss work while trying to figure out child-care issues. But more than losing a convenient baby-sitting center, the communities have lost a developmentally focused learning environment for their children, she said.

"These children need to be in their schools," Adams said.

Phyllis Wilcox, 44, of Wanblee said the community's parents would still celebrate the preschool children's Head Start graduation with or without the tribe's help.

"It's a concern for our community," she said. "A lot of little ones were looking forward to graduation."

The reservation programs were shut down before in 2003 and 2004 for noncompliance issues, Wilcox said.