The Healey administration has awarded child services money to a Chelsea-based aid group, with the benefits earmarked for Winthrop families, after blocking money to the Winthrop Parents Network as part of its penalties tied to the 3A housing law.

The local services group, Community Action Program Inner City, will get a Coordinated Family and Community Engagement grant worth $45,700 “to provide transition-to-kindergarten services for children in Winthrop,” a state spokesperson said.

The spokesperson, Kim Le of the state’s Department of Early Education and Care, offered no further details on the grant and its planned operations.

Positive response

The grant and the amount, however, exactly matches the one-year allocation that the 16-year-old Winthrop Parents Network said the state had unexpectedly withheld from it, forcing the Winthrop group to shut down last month.

The head of the Winthrop Parents Network, Anita Preble, said she had not heard of any reallocation of her group’s state grant money and could not comment on the announcement, though she suggested a receptiveness to an outcome that helps Winthrop’s children.

That action against the Winthrop Parents Network was described by Winthrop officials as an especially harsh example of the ways that the town has made itself vulnerable by refusing to comply with the 3A housing law.

Even state Senator Lydia Edwards, an advocate of Winthrop’s compliance with 3A and ally of the Healey administration, has questioned the state’s decision to cut grants involving children and their education as part of its 3A enforcement efforts.

Political shift

The issue was especially transformative for the president of the Winthrop Town Council, Jim Letterie, a longtime leader of the council’s position against 3A compliance. After Ms Preble emotionally announced the closure of the Winthrop Parents Network due to the state grant loss, Mr Letterie said that the state’s move crossed a line into unacceptability and he announced that he would no longer vote against 3A compliance in the council.

Children in Winthrop “really need the services,” Mr Letterie said in outlining his shift last month on the WCAT program Winthrop and the World. “To be taking that away from us is just ludicrous, and as quote-unquote the leader of the town, I can’t sit back and let that happen,” he said.

The 3A law requires towns to add zones that permit multifamily housing. Winthrop could comply without adding housing by rezoning parts of town that already have multifamily housing. It nevertheless remains among fewer than a dozen communities, from a group of 177 affected cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts, that remain non-compliant with the law. Even with Mr Letterie’s shift, the nine-member Town Council still appears to lack a clear majority in favor of complying with 3A.

Noncompliance so far has cost Winthrop an estimated $2.5 million in lost or disqualified grants, the involvement in multiple legal battles with the state, and the emergence of some persistent political divisions in the town and its leadership.

700 families

The Winthrop Parents Network had been receiving money from the Coordinated Family and Community Engagement fund since Ms Preble first applied for it in 2010. The grant began at $39,000 per year, and it was raised about 10 years ago to the $45,700 annual figure, she said.

The state grant was cut despite the fact that the Winthrop Parents Network had been promised a five-year grant with a duration lasting until 2028.

The program provided free early literacy and parenting education through playgroups, family nights and an annual international night, said Ms Preble, who also works as a counselor at the Arthur Cummings elementary school.

About 50 families a year attended the Winthrop Parents Network’s weekly playgroups, with four conducted in English and one in Spanish, Ms Preble said. That amounts to about 700 families since the program started, she said.