Bellevue School District administrators, Bellevue Schools Foundation staff and social services providers are scrambling to find funding and solutions for 151 preschool students, after an educational agency slashed funding for the district’s entire Head Start program.
Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD), with whom the Bellevue School District contracts for Head Start services, announced last month they would have to eliminate services for 399 students across the region due to reduced federal funding.
A whopping 151 of those students are from Bellevue — the only school district across the PSESD’s 35 service areas where the budget axe came down all the way.
While the Puget Sound agency said it was the best equitable solution to address need on a region-wide scale, their solution was heavy-handed to Bellevue, and it only scuffed other districts.
The agency’s solution penalizes poor Bellevue children and families for living in an affluent area.
“All children in need deserve the same kind of funding; it doesn’t matter where they live,” said Executive Director of the Bellevue Schools Foundation Lynn Juniel.
Many of these families are making sacrifices to live on the Eastside so their children can attend the Bellevue School District and have access to resources they may not otherwise receive in other districts. Some of these families — including many families living in the Highland Village apartments who will soon be evicted — squeeze into two bedroom units with other families so that they can afford the rent on several incomes.
They work low-paying jobs in the service sector, helping Bellevue’s burgeoning economy.
The PSESD’s decision to cut all 151 Head Start spots in Bellevue hurts the most vulnerable families in Bellevue, whose incomes fall below the federal poverty line. These families are now left struggling to find daycare and other basic services that Head Start once provided, including two hot meals a day and basic medical care for their children.
This solution reinforces the perception that the entire city of Bellevue is affluent. However, this is not the case, as 20 percent of Bellevue students receive free and reduced lunch. Bellevue is increasingly diverse, with 87 languages spoken in our schools and 54 percent of students are non-white, according to the district.
And worse, the decision casts a further shadow on the invisible poor — an oppressed group already struggling to have a voice.
It’s “redlining” an entire population that enriches Bellevue and forcing them out of our community, said Stephanie Cherrington, executive director of Eastside Pathways.
PSESD needs to establish more equal criteria in the future when deciding how to make these cuts. This could include distributing the cuts equally across the 35 service areas to prevent entire cuts to one district. Another option would be to use a lottery system across the service areas to decide which preschoolers can attend Head Start, as two Head Start programs did in Indiana in response to the federal government’s sequestration and subsequent budget cuts to early learning in 2013. Whatever criteria PSESD establishes moving forward, the agency should give all school districts ample time to find other solutions.
Now, the Bellevue School District and other organizations must find approximately $950,000 in the coming weeks to fund Head Start for the affected 151 students.
How we pick up the pieces will become a measure of who we are as a community. Our community principles must reflect that we value all residents. To help, visit www.bellevueschoolsfoundation.org.
