The federal government has notified Richmond that it will cut only 101 Head Start seats in the city next year, roughly half of what the School Board had requested as part of its plan to deal with chronic underenrollment in the pre-K program. 

The seat cut would be accompanied by a roughly $1 million reduction in funding. 

The Richmond School Board, which voted Tuesday evening to appeal the federal decision, had previously asked that its overall nearly $8.5 million budget remain intact despite a proposed 200-seat reduction. 

Richmond Public Schools officials had hoped that by shifting some of those funds to cover the cost of transporting children to Head Start sites run by community partners and reimbursing those partners more for each seat, enrollment could rise to the 97% level the federal government requires programs to maintain. 

On May 21, however, Heather Wanderski, a director in the Office of Head Start, notified Richmond that both seats and funding would be cut next year “based on unsatisfactory progress made towards achieving full enrollment over the last 12 months.” 

Under that plan, seats would fall from 750 to 649, and funding would dip to just over $7.3 million. 

Richmond is appealing that decision, arguing that its planned transportation investments, along with recent staffing changes, shifts in where seats are being offered and increased community partner funding will be able to turn its enrollment problem around. Significantly, RPS notes it has committed to offer transportation to all 3- and 4-year-olds at partner sites. 

The $1.1 million of funding in dispute “is critical not only to maintaining program operations but also to preserving the high-quality services we provide, including mental health supports, family engagement efforts, and instructional quality,” wrote Richmond Chief Academic Officer for Elementary Education Leslie Wiggins in the June 17 appeal letter. 

“We also have already increased our funding to our community sites and we want to continue our ability to provide additional funding for increased quality of service,” she wrote. “Without these resources, the program faces a significant risk of staff loss and service disruptions, just as our improvement efforts are gaining traction.” 

On June 3, Wiggins told the School Board that RPS had “a hard deadline of by July 1, we want every seat filled that we have been allotted.” 

Head Start is the nation’s preeminent pre-K program for low-income youth. Since the 1960s, it has provided free early childhood education and care to children under the age of 6. Richmond’s program also oversees classrooms in the city of Petersburg, as well as Powhatan and Goochland counties. 

This spring, the Office of Head Start issued the Richmond program a notice of deficiency, or a “systemic or substantial material failure.” The office identified two incidents of concern: a March 12 incident in which a substitute teacher at Blackwell Preschool Center slapped a 4-year-old on the face after the child had slapped them and a reporting violation where RPS failed to notify the Office of Head Start within seven days that a child had fallen on the Blackwell playground and fractured their arm.

Contact Reporter Sarah Vogelsong at svogelsong@richmonder.org