Students swing on a playground at Meadow Lakes Head Start in Wasilla, Alaska. (Image by Lela Seiler, courtesy of CCS Early Learning)
Meadow Lakes Head Start, a preschool in Wasilla that has 45 students, will close down at the end of the year. Half of the students will move on to kindergarten and the rest will have to find another preschool. The board of the nonprofit CCS Early Learning, which operates the Meadow Lakes program, made the decision at its January meeting.
Board President Michelle Greco has volunteered and worked with Head Start schools for the last 15 years. She said the decision comes on top of a deep cut to enrollment at the beginning of the year. The board, which runs five Head Start facilities in the region, had to cut 50 state-funded slots because they cannot afford them.
“We cut and cut and cut,” she said. “We cut bus routes, we were trying to cut everything else we can cut before we got to here.” But by next year, CCS will serve 95 fewer children.
Alaska’s Head Start program provides child care, early education and services like health care and dental to more than 3,000 children in low-income families. Struggling Head Start programs got $1.5 million in one-time funding last year, but will see state funding dip this year without a change. Last year the Legislature would have given Head Starts $5 million in one-time funding, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed most of it .