Manuel Alvarez couldn’t wait to take the big yellow bus to school with his neighbors.

The young boy would watch from the window as children boarded the bus, riding off to learn and play. While he always wanted to be social, Manuel was very shy and had trouble making friends, his mother said.

“He was so ready for school. I bought him a backpack and he would walk around with it on, ready to go,” Yolanda Alvarez said. But the family couldn’t afford to pay between $430 and $1,130 each month for preschool — they live in one of the few low-income apartment complexes in the city.

Preschool programs help children with social skills, but also lead to long-term academic success. Research has shown how critical high-quality early learning is for children before the age of 5, especially kids in poverty, and the long-term education, health and economic benefits, according to the Bellevue Schools Foundation. Early experiences develop the brain architecture, a 2016 University of Washington showed, and students enrolled in early education programs are more likely to go to college.

Until recently, families like the Alvarezes were able to send their children to preschool tuition-free, thanks to federal and state grants. But now, more than 150 Bellevue students’ educational futures are in jeopardy.

Federal funding for preschool programs is distributed to school districts in King and Pierce counties through the Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD). For many years, they had a longstanding grant, but PSESD was notified last fall that those funds would come to an end on June 30 and they would have to reapply and compete for funding.

After a competitive application process, PSESD was awarded a new grant last month for $18 million in funding annually for the next five years. It was not, however, the full amount they hoped for and nearly 400 tuition-free preschool spots funded by the grant had to be eliminated.

In the end, the entirety of the Bellevue School District’s funding was eliminated. The district lost 151 part- and full-day Head Start preschool spots that cost $950,000 due to the cut and many dozens of families are without beneficial early education, childcare for working parents, supplemental resources and more.

The cuts to Bellevue’s program were unrivaled across the 35 educational centers whose federal funding was overseen by PSESD.

Although the district was warned that there would likely be changes coming, they were shocked at the news.

“It’s an extremely heavy hand to deal specifically to Bellevue,” said Eastside Pathways Executive Director Stephanie Cherrington. “It may force populations out of our community.”

PSESD officials said that they sympathize with Bellevue’s situation, but stressed that it is a complex situation and that they wanted to place the reduced number of slots in areas of highest need.

“We could have taken an equal cut across the board, but we did an equitable cut … From our community assessment data, the population in Bellevue School District living in poverty was 278, but in Clover Park (another one of our districts), that number is 2,142,” said PSESD’s Interim Communications Director Melissa Laramie.

The organization looked at data from their Community Needs Assessment and Risk Assessment Tool. Northeast King County, they found, has the smallest count and percentage of children under the age of 5 living in poverty, as well as the fewest number of students eligibile for free or reduced-price lunch.

However, the Bellevue School District has significantly higher levels of free or reduced-price lunch students that neighboring districts like Lake Washington and Issaquah (20 percent compared to 13 and 8.4, respectively). The group of students receiving tuition-free preschool in Bellevue is also the largest on the Eastside, administrators said.

While Northeast King County in general was identified as having less need, no other school district in the area received more than a 20 percent overall cut.

“It’s true that Bellevue seems exceedingly wealthy, but there’s pockets of people who are really struggling,” said Chelsea Bloodworth, whose daughter attended preschool tuition free. “I’ve had friends who have questioned if anyone really needed social services in Bellevue, but we’re here.”

Bloodworth receives disability payments due to a brain injury, and she and her children live on just $500 a month. She’s able to make ends meet by living with a cousin, but Bloodworth had been hoping to find a part-time job she could handle — say, as a greeter at Wal-Mart — had her son been able to start preschool this year.

The loss of preschool comes at a doubly challenging time for some families who are also being forced out of the low-income Highland Village apartment complex, one of the few affordable housing options in the area. Elizabeth Hernandez and her husband learned of both blows around the same time, and they are worried about their future.

The families being affected by this cut are those with the greatest need, Bellevue Schools Foundation president Lynn Juniel said.

“When I think about it, I feel that our parents and our children are being penalized for being poor in an affluent area,” she said. “Because they are in an affluent area, there’s not as many services around them. It’s not like when a community has had this population for a long time, there are a lot of other service agencies around them. That is not the case here.”

With the loss of Head Start, families in need may also lose access to resources like free lunches for their children, dental and medical services, English classes and more. Free tuition recipients also had access to education, nutrition, transportation, health and family engagement services.

Both Hernandez and Yeimi Carrillo’s children were able to learn English at preschool, and other adults have been able to enroll in English classes. Both of Bloodworth’s children were able to benefit from the resources, and even received gifts for Christmas.

“We would have been in a much worse boat without these services,” she said. “Christmas would have been very meager without them.”

But the hardest pill to swallow is the potential loss of early education and its benefits on their children’s futures.

“Academics-wise, I saw a huge improvement with him, and it really helped with his self-esteem,” Yolanda Alvarez said of her son’s experience.

Across the nation, the importance of early learning programs has been solidified. Last fall, Washington approved the Best Starts for Kids levy to target the critical early years of childhood. To be competitive during their reapplication, PSESD had to meet priority levels set by the federal Office of Head Start, implementing more full-day programs and extending all Head Start programs from 120 days to 170 days per year.

The elimination of Bellevue’s program will strike populations already vulnerable in the education system — three-quarters of Latino and 58 percent of black preschool students in the city receive free tuition.

The Bellevue School District has built a strong early learning program over the last few years, one that PSESD called remarkable in a letter responding to the district’s appeal of the funding elimination. Carrillo said that most of all, she is sad for her 3-year-old daughter, who won’t get to benefit from the schooling that had a huge effect on her older son.

Her biggest wish, she said, is that her daughter will be able to go to preschool.

While the Bellevue School District and the Bellevue Schools Foundation have identified funding that can support approximately 40 part-day slots, they are also partnering with Eastside Pathways to launch a fundraising campaign. But because the district wasn’t notified of the cut until mid-June, they are short on time, but they are hoping the community will step up.

“This is an above-and-beyond type of situation. We are very lucky to be in a community where we know we can reach out and try and raise this funding, but we realize that’s sort of a double-edged sword … This is an injustice, and just because we may be able to make that up, it doesn’t mean that that’s the way it should be,” Juniel said.

Interested persons can find information on donating to preschool programs at www.bellevueschoolsfoundation.org.

Note: Some of the subjects in this story do not speak English and were interviewed using an interpreter.