Cuts in funding linked in part to a federal citation for having a child left alone in a schoolyard at a Head Start site will force Westmoreland Community Action to close 11 of its centers and lay off 24 workers at the end of the month.

Waltenbaugh did not return several calls Thursday and Friday to talk about the issue that led to the reduced funding to his agency for the program that offers educational and other services to low-income children and their families.

Community Action last year received about $5.5 million from Westmoreland County to operate Head Start.

The federal agency barred the county from having exclusive rights to the funding because of the citation and for the program receiving an inadequate performance rating from the U.S.

Community Action received $3.9 million this year, and Seton Hill Child Services won a $1.6 million federal grant for the program, which equals the overall funding received in 2015.

According to reports posted on the federal agency’s website, Westmoreland County, as the lead agency for the local Head Start program, was cited in October 2013 after a 4-year-old at a center was left alone and unsupervised in an Irwin schoolyard for about 10 minutes.

Community Action last year subcontracted with the Seton Hill agency to provide services to about 780 children.

The federal report also found the Westmoreland County program was not meeting its standards for instruction criteria, scoring in the bottom 10 percent of all Head Start programs.

For more than a decade, the county commissioners applied for Head Start funding and then passed the money along to the nonprofit Community Action, which operated 29 centers.