A hard lesson

Four hundred miles north of where a new governor worries about the structure and accountability of his agencies, Zeyda Foreman just wants to do right by her kids. “They love the games, and they especially love the reading,” said Foreman, a stay-at-home mom of 3-year-old twins. “They try to read, too – oh my gosh, they’ve come a long way.”

Foreman, who has multiple sclerosis, has been in the North Idaho Parents as Teachers program with twins Kaden and Erika since they were 1, and now they’re almost 3 ½. Once a month, a parent educator has come to her Coeur d’Alene home to meet with her and the kids, helping with developmental tips, games and pre-reading skills. She also helped Foreman and her husband, Erik. find assistance when young Kaden’s expressive language was delayed.

“I never knew that there was help out there,” the mom said. “It’s so important to me, just that once-a-month visit – I wish it was once a week.”

But the visits have ended. North Idaho Parents as Teachers shut down last month, laying off both its staff members and cutting off its 38 families, plus 20 more on a waiting list, after Gov. Butch Otter ordered an end to state funding for the program.

“We just don’t have any more money to continue because of the funding cuts,” said Julie Pierce, the parent educator affectionately called “Gooly” by Foreman’s kids. “It’s very sad and very frustrating.”

Otter is frustrated, too, but for different reasons. He said he’s tired of people coming up to him on the street and asking why he abruptly cut the funding for Parents as Teachers and an array of other early childhood programs last month. The governor’s decision threw hundreds of families statewide out of the programs and forced the immediate layoffs of nearly 40 people, including four state employees and 17 employees of the University of Idaho.

Otter said he had nothing against Parents as Teachers and didn’t even know enough about the program to know if he liked it or not. But he didn’t like the way a previous administration had segregated the early childhood programs from other Health and Welfare and education programs directly under the governor’s office, and funneled federal welfare funds from Health and Welfare to fund them.

“Sometimes the most frustrating thing is when you’re trying to establish credibility and you’re trying to establish responsibility in government, and people get very passionate about programs like these programs, and they want to question your reasons for doing it,” Otter told The Spokesman-Review. “And they have a hard time getting an understanding that the reason that we’re doing it … is that we have a fiduciary responsibility to the people that we’re getting the money from. So they say, well, y’know, he’s doing it because he never did like kids.”

The governor said he couldn’t find hard numbers on the effectiveness of Idaho’s Parents as Teachers programs, nor could he figure out to whom it and other programs reported.

But it appears that Otter simply never assigned the programs – which, in the Executive Office for Families and Children, fell under the governor’s office – to anyone on his staff. The programs also had been regularly supplying the governor’s office and the Legislature with annual reports filled with data on how many children were served and with what results.

Previous Gov. Jim Risch had assigned his deputy chief of staff, Barbara Strickfaden, to oversee the programs. Before him, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne established the programs as his “Generation of the Child” initiative, and both he and First Lady Patricia Kempthorne closely oversaw them.

Otter said, “We’ve been scrambling around trying to find … who are they accountable to, No. 1, and all we could find was that they really weren’t accountable to anybody. Who were they writing a report to? Who was setting some standards?”

Otter’s former education adviser, Karen McGee, who left his office last week to work for the state Board of Education, said both she and First Lady Lori Otter were contacted by the people running the programs. “They’d come in and say, ‘Well, who do we report to?’ ” McGee said. “We’d say, ‘We don’t know, who do you report to?’ “

Otter proposed no changes in the structure of the Executive Office for Families and Children for the first four months of his administration, which included his first legislative session. The governor’s staff was focused on other issues, from his unsuccessful push for an expanded grocery tax credit to his proposal for a massive reorganization of the Department of Administration and Division of Human Resources.

Audit raised concerns

Otter said he was prompted to act when a legislative audit pointed to possible problems with using the federal welfare funds for several programs, including the Executive Office for Families and Children, which was receiving $1.48 million a year, and a $1.5 million annual boost to Head Start, the popular, federally funded preschool program for low-income children.

State lawmakers targeted those welfare funds to Head Start in the 1999 legislative session in order to let 300 more children into the program, which had long waiting lists statewide. They’ve approved those funds each year since then. Head Start still has waiting lists in Idaho, which is one of only a few states that puts no state funding into the program.

Dick Armstrong, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said the audit raised concerns and his staff began meeting with federal officials to make sure the state wasn’t running afoul of federal rules for using welfare funds. Head Start got a clean bill of health, but Parents as Teachers didn’t, he said. The parenting program is open to everyone, not just the needy.

“Parents as Teachers is a great program. … This isn’t a judgment about its value,” Armstrong said.

But he said he was convinced Idaho could no longer get away with spending federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families money on the program, and he wanted to stop doing so before the new state fiscal year started July 1 for fear of possible federal penalties.

Otter agreed. “I don’t want to have to pay back any more money than we’re already exposed to, plus the 5 percent (possible federal penalty).”

To complicate matters, Idaho is facing a $3.4 million decrease in its federal welfare funds starting in fiscal year 2009, and Armstrong said the state needs to cut back somewhere. The main purpose of those federal welfare funds is for short-term cash assistance, child care and job training to move poor Idahoans toward self-sufficiency.

“The issue around Head Start is far from resolved,” Armstrong said, because those funds are shrinking. But he noted that no cuts have been made in that program, and the federal funding has been guaranteed at least through January.

Otter said the extra welfare funds for expanding Head Start are evaporating. “We’re going to get less of that,” he said. “If the Legislature wants to take a look at whether they want to make up that million and a half, that’s a good point for us to discuss.”

But he added that, just like for all programs, he’d want to be assured that the return on investment is being measured. “I would want the Legislature to help me then establish certain standards of measurement.”

Idaho Parents as Teachers officials bristle at the suggestion that their program lacked data or measurements. “We’ve been as transparent as we could be. We’ve provided data whenever it’s been asked for,” said Diane Demarest, whose job as Parents as Teachers project director for the University of Idaho will end June 15. “We clearly have that data.”

The University of Idaho has a contract with the state – it’s being canceled as of June 15 – to run 13 of the state’s 38 Parents as Teachers programs, and to evaluate all of them. Some of its evaluation tools have been adopted as models by other states.

One test the UI conducted showed that 87 percent of 5-year-olds enrolled in Parents as Teachers in Idaho in the past five years scored at the “ready to read” level on a nationally recognized reading readiness test, while the national norm for five-year-olds is 35 percent. Reading readiness is a key indicator for later success in school. Of the same Idaho kids, only 18 percent scored at the “ready to read” level when they were 4. That showed the gains they made while enrolled in the program.

“We feel like that’s pretty darn exciting,” said Harriet Shaklee, a University of Idaho professor and family development specialist for the UI Extension.

Shaklee said Idaho’s Parents as Teachers programs spend roughly $875 to serve one child for 12 months. She added, “I just think it’s a very surprising thing to cut a program assuming you don’t have data, when you never even asked anybody.”

Lawmakers like program

State Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna said he’s a fan of Parents as Teachers and is working with program officials to pull together “the success stories and the proof of the success of this program.” He hopes to make a case to continue the programs somehow.

Without an Executive Office for Families and Children, Luna said, “I think that the program could operate under Health and Welfare like it does in other states very effectively.”

But Armstrong, the Health and Welfare chief, said he thought the program was more educational in nature.

Rep. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, chairman of the House Education Committee, said, “I’m a big proponent of parents working with their own children in early childhood development, and if there are worthwhile programs that are doing those things and are successful … I think we need to look hard at those programs before we decide to make those cuts.”

Nonini said, “Maybe we can do some persuasion with the governor to reinstate that program before the next school year starts.”

Sen. Joyce Broadsword, R-Sagle, vice-chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, said, “They are hugely important programs to my district.”

Broadsword said, “I will be looking at areas that we could find funding to support some of these programs. If there needs to be a new way of administering them … maybe that’s what we need to do, rather than just saying, ‘Nope, no more.’ “

New governors face a daunting task, she added. “He’s got a whole new staff that’s trying to learn their jobs. It’s hard to jump in feet first when you don’t really know how deep the water is.”

Otter said he wants his department heads to assess whether programs properly fit in their departments, such as Parents as Teachers in Health and Welfare or in Education. Most other programs that were under the Executive Office for Families and Children are being sent back to Health and Welfare or eliminated.

“No. 2, I want them to set up and prove to me that they’re going to be able to measure (results), and what kind of expectations will we have for the money that we’re committing to that program,” Otter said.

The governor referred back to his inaugural address. “I said it wasn’t going to be easy to have a sea change here. … Fortunately, I think all my team now gets it. … I’ll tell you, one thing we’re going to end up with is some measurements.”

Of Idaho’s 38 Parents as Teachers programs, 22 are shutting down because of the budget cuts. The remaining ones, like ICARE in Coeur d’Alene, have other funding sources. ICARE, whose main mission is child abuse prevention, is losing 20 percent of its funding but plans to stay open and stretch its staff further.

“We’re looking everywhere we possibly can for funding,” said Executive Director Beth Barclay.

ICARE serves about 35 families and has a dozen on its waiting list. It also offers classes for parents of older children and accepts court referrals.

Meanwhile, Julie Pierce, who worked as a family educator for North Idaho Parents as Teachers for eight years, is job hunting.

“We love the program and we love our families, but we need to work,” Pierce said.

Zeyda Foreman, the mother of twins, said she was “just so devastated” when she learned the program would end. “I got that letter and I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Is it all about the money? It needs to be all about the family.”

Barclay said, “Our hearts go out to all the families all around the state who are losing these services. I mean, it just really doesn’t make sense when we see the value of what it does.”