For the second time this year, the Monticello Area Community Action Agency (MACAA) hit another roadblock: It couldn’t get the money needed to run an Early Head Start and Head Start program.
Nearly a year ago, in January, MACAA surrendered its early Head Start grant, about $2.7 million annually, to run nine centers after receiving multiple deficiency conditions from the federal Office of Head Start.
Two months later in March, MACAA closed its Head Start centers in Charlottesville and Albemarle, Louisa, Nelson and Fluvanna counties. The nine centers served about 200 families.
Seeking to redeem its child-care mission, MACAA’s board of directors applied for a smaller grant from the federal Office of Head Start (OHS) in May to open a single new Head Start location in its service area. The grant, which awards a minimum amount of $750,000, is meant to support new or existing Head Start providers by giving them funds to expand their existing services, the document reads.
But in September, after receiving no response to its grant application, MACAA once more had to face reality. Although OHS did not officially notify MACAA that it did not receive the grant, Sarah Shalf, MACAA’s board chair, suggested that the lack of communication from OHS stated the obvious.
“We have not gotten any notification, so we assume we did not receive the grant,” Shalf wrote in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
After several inquiries to the Administration of Children of Families, which oversees OHS under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Charlottesville Tomorrow was told that MACAA “was not among those applicants selected for funding.”
An email from ACH’s office of communication states that the “Early Head Start, Head Start and Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership Expansion funding opportunity was a nationwide competition and that grant requests exceeded the $100 million Congress appropriated for expansion.
“Applications were reviewed and scored by a non-federal review panel, and Monticello Area Community Action Agency was not among those applicants selected for funding,” according to the ACF email.
Despite this latest outcome, MACAA does not plan to surrender a second time.
“In sum, we are forging ahead,” Shalf said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Shalf said the board is “developing concepts” of an early education program at Kindlewood, a public housing community, and Southwood Mobile Home Park with the Piedmont Housing Alliance. The program would be a partnership between MACAA and PHA, with “mixed funding sources,” according to Shalf’s email.
