Chelsea Lord is an enrollment coordinator with New Hanover County’s Early Childhood Department. While the district’s preschool programs do have qualifications like income limits and if the student has some educational risk factors (which are identified through a screening process), she’s encouraging families with students at this age level to apply.
“I want everyone to know: I would love for you to apply, even if you think you might not be able to qualify. I would love to have a conversation,” she said.
Lord said the application itself is fairly quick but families need to have the child’s documents ready to upload; that includes proof of residency, a birth certificate/passport, immunization records, proof of income for those who live with the child, a parent acknowledgement form, and a guardian ID.
Most of the NHCS preschool spots are now funded through NC Pre-K, which requires students to be four-years-old. Since NHCS is the grantee of NC Pre-K, they place students in both public and private sites. Lord said they currently have 540 public spots and will help place 186 students in private sites.
“We operate off parent choice, and typically the dominant factor is transportation. So, since pre-K is not mandatory by the state, our transportation department will only provide [that] to those who live in the district, so for the private sites, they do not provide [it either],” she said.
While NHCS preschool is available from about 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., they do facilitate transportation to afternoon care at private sites throughout the county. That is an additional cost for parents, however.
As for the anticipated waitlist, Lord said they have 214 students — 200 of them are three-year-olds. The backlog is, in part, due to cuts to county funding.
“That is just because I do not have the funded slots for them; the loss of that county funding did affect our program and who we were able to serve pretty severely, but we only have 14 on the waitlist for four-year-olds,” she said.
Lord said they do still have six classrooms that New Hanover County commissioners funded for three-year-olds; they used to have 12. The vote for this year’s budget fell along partisan lines, with Republicans Bill Rivenbark, Dane Scalise, and LeAnn Pierce in support — and Democrats Stephanie Walker and Rob Zapple voting against. Both Walker and Zapple cited the loss of the preschool classrooms as one of the reasons for the vote against last year’s budget.
“So it is harder for three-year-olds. Unfortunately, just where we are at with the budget unless something changes, which fingers crossed. But it helps, even if they are on a waitlist, it does give them additional criteria points for the following year, to make sure that they're guaranteed that second year pre-K,” she added.
Lord said she thinks that the majority of those students on the waitlist will want the slot, and “then we still have around 300 more spots that we're hoping to fill.”
She added that she uses those waitlist numbers to go to the county commissioners, The Endowment, and Smart Start, and say, “I've got 303 year-olds in our area that aren't being served, and how can we meet this [need]?”
The district is hoping to inform families who do get a spot as early as April and into May.
Lord underlined that those students who attend preschool do better in kindergarten when they’ve been through their program.
“It helps these students have the stamina to be in that kindergarten classroom that whole day. They're coming in ready to learn,” she said.
While Lord continues to tout the success students have in preschool, she reiterates that she's saddened by the recent cuts to preschool in New Hanover County.
“I've been here since 2021, and our program has been cut in half essentially, because we lost Head Start, and then, of course, we lost the county funding last year. And so I think when I started, we served over 1,000 students. And so now I'm in the office doing enrollment, and it's 500, which I'm happy to have. I hope it stays, but I would like to see it get back up to where it was,” she said.
When asked if she wanted to go beyond that and serve more than 1,000 students, Lord replied, “Hey, what an idea!”
She also said the College Road Early Childhood Center, where she works, had to close for an electrical fire. There were no injuries, and students and staff returned to the building less than a week later.
“Following the incident, I’m happy to report there were no flames, and it seems as though it was a backup server that just sort of started sparking and created smoke. [...] We were happy to see staff back on Wednesday [January 14] and students came back on Thursday [January 15]," she said.
NHCS placement options
- Castle Hayne Elementary, Wrightsboro Elementary, Murrayville Elementary, Blair Elementary, College Road Early Childhood Center, Dorothy B. Johnson, and Mary Washington Howe preschool
- NC PreK does place students at private sites, but those sites are in the process of being finalized
Resources
- If you need assistance, call the Early Childhood Enrollment Office at 910-254-4173 or email them at earlychildhood@nhcs.net
- Early Childhood Education
- NHCS Preschool FAQs
Application Tips
- If you are a returning family already with a profile — you might have difficulty applying online, so you’ll have to call/email the enrollment office.
- If you need to edit your application after submitting, you won’t be able to go back in — you’ll also have to contact the office
