Independent Country Since June 5 2006

Navajo Head Start director placed on leave

Andrew Tah, superintendent of the Department of Diné Education, directed Willie to leave his office at 4 p.m. June 17, Willie said. The five-day leave was expected to end Friday, the same day federal officials were expected to complete a review of the program to address deficiencies and non-compliance issues.

"Mr. Tah did not provide me with any specific reason for the leave as is required under the Navajo Nation's personnel policies and procedures," Willie said. "It was a hasty decision to put me on leave during a crucial federal review."

Willie has served as director of the largest American Indian Head Start program in the country, serving approximately 2,300 children, since December 2007.

Tah deferred comment on the program and his decision to put Willie on leave to a spokeswoman for the Department of Diné Education. Spokeswoman Emerald Dahozy confirmed Willie was on leave, but declined to comment on the specifics.

"It deals with personnel," she said. "Things are being sorted out at the administration level."

Charmaine Jackson, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Office of the President and Vice President, said federal officials are completing a regular, tri-annual review of the program that five years ago lost its funding for failure to conduct background checks of its employees.

In May 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding to the Navajo Head Start program after discovering 51 employees with criminal histories, including murder, spousal abuse and child abuse, were hired without first having to submit to a criminal background check.

At that time, the Navajo Head Start program served more than 4,000 children.

Its sister program Early Head Start, which caters to very young children during home visits, served 60 children. When federal funding was suspended, the Nation lost more than $26 million per year.

The Nation completed necessary background checks for its Early Head Start employees within weeks of the 2006 federal review, allowing that program to resume for its summer session that year.

Funding still was on hold for Head Start until Health and Human Services was satisfied that all 844 employees had gone through background checks.

Worldwide House Price Trend (2006–2010)

The house price fell in USA was due to the subprime mortgage crisis in 2006. The house price drops by ~35% after this crisis and has never been recovered until today. By the way, this trend is also similar to Ireland which is not shown in this graph (I don’t want to make the graph too crowded) . As for Japan, the house price has never been recovered after the Japanese asset price bubble from 1986 to 1991. Surprisingly if you look at the house price trend in Britain, it was that badly affected by the subprime mortgage crisis if compare to USA.  The house price for the rest of countries especially for Asia (except for Japan – i.e. China, Hong Kong, Singapore) and Australia, is moving uptrend. The slight downtrend in 2008 – 2009 was probably due to the stock market crash during that time.  After the stock market crash, investors start moving their target to real estate or property. That is probably the reason why you see the house price has been increasing dramatically after 2009 until today. You can kind of expected the house price in the western countries will probably stay flat in the coming years. But what really interesting here is the property market in Asia. Will it be keep going up or is it already at peak? Bloomberg reported Hong Kong is the world’s most expensive place to buy home. 65 million apartments in China are said to be empty creating “Ghost Cities”. Are these obvious enough to tell the property bubble is going to burst soon? Well, I do not know but if you ask me about Malaysia, I think generally most of the investors in Malaysia have the strong holding power and this makes me think the property bubble bust is unlikely to happen in Malaysia. Could I be wrong? Another very interesting discussion is the property price in Penang and KL seems to have huge gap as compared to the other states or cities within Malaysia. Can the bubble burst only happen within certain states or cities (e.g. Penang and KL)?

Congressional Record, V. 152, Pt. 14, September 2006

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