Head Start names permanent executive director

Irma Peña

The Hidalgo County Head Start Program Policy Council interviewed candidates for executive director last month and named Interim Executive Director Irma Peña to the permanent post at a rate of $140,000 a year.

That compensation package includes a car allowance, and council members will revisit Peña’s pay after a six month probationary period.

The sole council member to vote against the move was Abraham Padron, who said he was uncomfortable with the compensation package.

“Absolutely no. And I’m saying no to the pay. I’m OK with hiring her, but no to the pay,” he said. “And I want that on the record, I want it on the record that we shouldn’t do that, we should wait and see what she’s actually going to do.”

Peña failed to meet the deadline stipulated by the Texas Public Information Act in releasing the video from the policy council meeting this November in which she was chosen as permanent director, although she did ultimately release that recording after repeated inquiries.

The council named Peña interim executive director in September after the ouster of longtime director Teresa Flores.

Flores’ termination followed a series of scandalously disorderly meetings of the council, which was most apparently divided over eligibility requirements for council members.

Flores has said she intends to sue.

More division briefly bubbled up in the beginning of Peña’s term as interim when two administrators who’d spoken out against Flores’ termination faced the possibility of disciplinary action.

Those administrators ultimately avoided any immediate punishment, and things at the organization seem to have calmed down.

At the time of her appointment in September, Peña served as a Head Start Federal Reviewer consultant and as the social services director of Amara Hospice in Edinburg.

Before that, Peña spent a significant number of years working for Hidalgo County Head Start, including two years as its interim executive director in the 90s.

Ironically, Peña served those two years while the program was going through an even more spectacular leadership meltdown that featured policy council bickering that was — somehow — even worse than the infighting from this August.

Peña’s stint as interim executive at that time unceremoniously ended when the then-Hidalgo County Judge J. Edgar Ruiz booted her from the position amidst a partisan power struggle.