Robbinsdale district outlines elimination of Family Literacy program; staff describe mitigation steps

Robbinsdale Area Schools administrators told the school board on April 22 that the district will discontinue its Family Literacy program for the 2025–26 school year after a budget review showed the program has been operating at a sustained deficit.

Executive Director Anthony Williams and Emily Levinson, the director of early learning, presented details of the decision and described steps the district is taking to reduce disruption for families who currently use the program at the Crystal Learning Center.

Williams said the program serves 27 families and 31 students; he added that roughly 17 of those students would have remained enrolled next year because others will enter kindergarten. “To continue to operate the Family L.E.A.D. program, we projected that ... it runs us off of a financial cliff within the early learning budget,” Williams said, describing a decade-long deficit trend.

Williams and Levinson said staff met with families and held listening sessions and that district early-learning staff have worked directly with affected families since April 7 to register them in other programs. Levinson said New Hope Learning Center provides licensed staff and the same curriculum and supports, but she emphasized that “it's not the same” as the current five-hour Family Literacy model. The district has set aside scholarships in its early adventures (full-day care) program for current families and offered individualized help to register children in available programs; staff said to date they had helped most Robbinsdale-resident families currently enrolled to register elsewhere.

Williams described funding sources: the program had been supported primarily by ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) funding and a small portion of adult academic funding; he noted federal funding for family literacy (Even Start) ended in 2011 and that the district continued the program since then despite funding challenges. Williams said the district met with staff and families multiple times prior to announcing the change and framed the decision as fiscal rather than a judgment on program quality.

Board members asked whether New Hope Learning Center could replicate all program elements and about outreach. Levinson said curriculum and staff qualifications would be the same, but parents would not be present for the full five-hour model in that site. Williams said staff and social workers had spent more than 20 hours connecting personally with families after the announcement and that nine of 14 Robbinsdale-resident families were either registered or in the process of registering for alternative programming. The district also said it helped several families who live outside Robbinsdale enroll in programs in their home districts.

The district did not present a budget motion at the meeting; the change was described as a FY2025–26 budget decision under the early-learning fund.