Head Start Holds On

New Haven’s Head Start has cleared a first hurdle in the quest to convince the federal government it deserves to continue its pioneering role in helping tots prepare for kindergarten.

New Haven receives about $4.5 million a year to serve young kids from low-income families through the federal Head Start program. In response to a new directive from Washington, the city has been competing for the right to keep providing that service to nearly 1,000 kids from birth to 5 years old.

The school district earlier this month became a finalist in the competition; the district is now scrambling to negotiate terms of a new contract with the federal government before its current contract ends on July 1. The timeline and outcome of those negotiations will dictate whether the city can continue offering 154 seats in a summer program at the Early Childhood Learning Center on Blake Street.

The new competition represents a new twist in the city’s historic role in the federal program: New Haven was an original lab for Head Start, which aims to prepare poorer kids for kindergarten through academic, health care, and parent programs. A Yale professor, Edward Zigler, designed Head Start in the 1960s. New Haven tested the first Head Start sites in the early 1960. Based on its successes, Head Start went nationwide and became part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

New Haven now serves 978 students from birth to 5 years old in 11 Head Start locations across the city, according to Head Start director Claudia McNeil. That includes two sites run by an outside provider called LULAC. The city has been waiting for a year and a half to find out whether it will continue to receive federal money to serve those kids.

The city was one of 125 Head Start grantees that ​“did not meet quality thresholds” and were notified in Dec 2011 they had to ​“compete with other potential providers for continued Head Start funding,” according to the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which manages Head Start.

New Haven fell into that category because of problems auditors flagged several years ago, the last time the federal government conducted a triennial review, according to McNeil. That review found that criminal background checks were not being adequately documented. The problem was corrected within a day of the finding, according to public schools spokeswoman Abbe Smith.

A separate audit, by the inspector general and based on the 2008-09 school year, alleged the school district had misallocated $510,000, failed to provide health screenings for all children, and violated federal law in 16 different ways. New Haven addressed the concerns as soon as they were identified and kept its contract, McNeil said.

Head Start is asking a quarter of its grant recipients nationwide to recompete for their money, McNeil said. The competition, ​“for the first time ever, required providers to show they are offering children the best early education services available in their community,” according to the ACF.

New Haven cleared a key hurdle earlier this month when it emerged on a list of ​“preliminary awardees” in line to keep their funding. Not everyone made it through the competition: Of the 125 existing Head Start grantees forced to recompete for their contracts, 25 will be ​“replaced by new programs that developed better plans”; and 14 will have to share their grants with other providers.

McNeil said the federal government did not disclose whether any other local organizations competed for New Haven’s contract. New Haven was one of 80 existing providers that won the opportunity to renew its contract, according to the ACF.

She called the competition ​“a good thing. Everything is an opportunity, an opportunity to improve quality of services by rethinking” the way the city serves kids.

The process isn’t over yet. New Haven is still a ​“potential awardee,” not a ​“final grantee.” The school district still has to negotiate with ACF on the terms of a five-year contract to replace its three-year contract. Just how much money New Haven will receive may depend on the federal sequester, which cut Head Start budgets by 5 percent.

Final grantees will be announced by July, according to the ACF.

Local officials are hoping to hear sooner so they can make plans for the summer. New Haven typically keeps the Early Childhood Learning Center open during school vacations and summers, serving 120 3- to 5‑year-olds and 24 infants and toddlers. Whether that program will go forward depends on negotiations with the federal government: As of now, she said, ​“we don’t have the money” in place.