Lancaster Questions Use of Funds by Head Start : Inquiries: The program’s ex-director says some of the $20,814 went to the L.A. headquarters instead of poor children.

The city of Lancaster is trying to determine how more than $20,000 that was set aside for poor children was spent by a Los Angeles Head Start agency.

City Manager Jim Gilley said Tuesday the city is looking into allegations that the money was spent improperly by the Frederick Douglass Child Development Center, which operates Head Start programs serving more than 1,200 children in Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley. “We have to take a look at this,” he said.

Since 1984, Lancaster has given the Head Start agency a total of $20,814. The condition under which the money was given was that it should be used to benefit disadvantaged children in the city, Lancaster officials said.

Asked if that restriction had been adhered to, Ted Anderson, who was executive director of the agency until Tuesday, said: “Not in the past.”

He said he would supply Lancaster officials with an explanation of where the money went, but said without elaboration that “sometimes it went to headquarters staff” in Los Angeles. He also said some of the money may have been used to pay members of the board of directors to attend meetings.

He said all of those things happened before he took over the agency a year ago.

At the same time that the investigation was announced Tuesday, Anderson, 65, said he was resigning as executive director of the agency. Anderson said he was leaving out of frustration over his inability to correct problems at the agency. The Los Angeles County Office of Education threatened more than a year ago to terminate the agency’s $3.5-million federal grant and ordered the board of directors to “refrain from getting involved in day-to-day operation” of the agency.

“If they’re going to run it, they don’t need me,” Anderson said.

Efforts to reach Mary Lou Hamaker, senior project director for Head Start at the Office of Education, were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Head Start was created 26 years ago and has outlived a variety of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society experiments to become a highly popular social welfare program. Offering meals, instruction and medical care to disadvantaged youngsters, Head Start has been embraced by conservatives and liberals alike.

Anderson said he remains committed to the program. “I will not do anything to hurt Head Start,” he said. “I just want to see that we deliver what we say we will do.”

The allegations about the Lancaster expenditures arose when a parent called City Hall to complain that money for Lancaster’s children was being spent elsewhere. A city staff member called Anderson, who “indicated that he thought there were some improprieties in how the funds were spent,” according to Assistant City Manager Dennis Davenport.

On Tuesday, Anderson said that after he began inquiring about expenditures, it appeared that money was shifted back to Lancaster’s account from a separate account drawn on by the board.

Anderson asked for an accounting of the Lancaster money and on Aug. 7 found that there was $4,068.75 in the fund and $7,819.81 in a separate account set aside for the board of directors. On Aug. 31, however, there was $8,036.84 in the Lancaster fund and only $3,959.73 in the board account.

The agency’s fiscal officer, Ludovico Ramillano, said the difference is easy to explain. He said $4,412 was accidentally credited to the board’s account, instead of to Lancaster’s account. It was only after Anderson’s inquiry that the error was discovered. “We put it back,” he said. “It was an honest mistake on our part.”

Asked why Anderson would make statements questioning the use of the money, Ramillano said: “I don’t know, maybe because he’s leaving. It might be some way of discrediting us.”

But Anderson said that “according to my best recollection” of a conversation last year, Ramillano told him a portion of the Lancaster funds were used to pay stipends to board members to attend meetings.

Membership on the board of directors is voluntary. Regulations forbid the use of federal money to pay stipends to attend meetings.