Christy Miller is the director of grants management at Early Learning Academies. She said they’re not taking applications currently but hope to later this fall. The two Excel sites that will serve the Head Start grant will be at their Vision Drive and 17th Street locations.
“We're moving as quickly as we can to start serving children because we know that there have been families that have been displaced from their care and that they are having a difficult time, so we're trying to move it along as fast as we can, but it does take some time,” Miller said.
Those families who qualify for Head Start programs must meet federal poverty income guidelines. Miller said there are other qualifying factors outside of income, like if the child has a suspected or identified disability, if the family is homeless, or if the child is in foster care.
Since they were just notified of the grant, they must train and hire preschool teachers. With this funding, Excel will also serve 72 infants (starting at six weeks) and toddlers. Each of these '0-2' classrooms will have a maximum of eight children and two lead teachers.
There will be 116 spots for Head Start three- and four-year-olds, spread among seven classrooms, with an average of about 17 children in each room. Each classroom will have a lead teacher and a teacher assistant.
Miller said Excel Learning uses the ‘Creative Curriculum’ for its classrooms. They’ll conduct formative assessments, such as observations and activities, to monitor each child's progress.
Federal Head Start teachers must have a bachelor's degree in early childhood or family development/education or an equivalent degree. Teacher assistants or educators for 0-2 Head Start must have a center-based preschool (CDA) or an associate of arts (AA) in early childhood education or an equivalent degree.
According to Miller, once educational backgrounds are verified, they must undergo fingerprinting and criminal background checks, which can take some time.
She added once they've hired this personnel, they'll start to release information about NHC Head Start applications and their opening dates.
Why did NHCS lose the grant?
Before Excel Learning was awarded the Head Start program, NHCS’ Dorothy B. Johnson Preschool provided those services. WHQR sent a records request to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) to see whether there had been any emerging issues over the past five years.
WHQR also filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request with the federal Head Start program to inspect the organizations that submitted applications and the rubrics/scoring sheets used to evaluate them. Those records have yet to be provided.
The state records show an instance of a transportation issue in 2019. The former director of Dorothy Johnson, Karen McCarty, who now works as an assistant principal at Eaton Elementary, informed NCDHHS that on October 28, 2019, “bus monitors released a child to the incorrect adult. The school was in communications with that adult and the mother of the child via phone until the child was picked up by an uncle and returned to the correct family member.” She added that she would review procedures with all bus monitors, which is confirmed by state records.
In July 2021, NCDHHS found that 14 sinks and one bathtub had high levels of lead-based paint. Once identified, the district had these removed and new ones installed. After those findings, they had a provisional license and a downgrading of their five-star rating, but the full license and rating were reinstated in November 2021 once everything was remediated.
In an email from March 2022, one relatively new hire was partly responsible for calculating some pre-K invoices and apologized for making some mistakes.
“The person that used to do this left, and no training was given. I am reading notes and referring to old documents as I go," the employee wrote.
In a March 2023 email, the early childhood education director, Shannon Smiles, discussed the difficulties of recent staff shortages and the issues with getting new hires up to speed.
In March 2024, McCarty responded via email to the violations noted in NCDHHS’s most recent visit, but the records did not state what those were. WHQR asked the district if they could divulge the nature of the violation and has yet to hear back.
According to the district's personnel records, Johnson Pre-K hired seven new employees this past school year, but 18 resigned. Close to half of those resignations came specifically from Head Start personnel. On Johnson’s website, they currently have 28 employees. Last year’s listing had over 50 positions.
WHQR contacted the district to add other contextual information about the school and the loss of the Head Start grant but has yet to hear back. We've also requested information from federal Head Start representatives who said they would release the grant announcement later this summer but never did.
We also contacted Miller to get the overall grant award amount and have yet to receive that information. Miller said of the funding, “Some of those numbers are still being worked out with the Office of Head Start so that I can get back to you on that one.”