The right hugs for White Center

An influx of attention and resources into the White Center area offers the best remedy yet for the seemingly intractable challenges of poverty and immigration.

The King County neighborhood South of Seattle contends with financially strapped schools and large numbers of limited-English-speaking families.Assistance comes in the form of recently announced public-private initiatives, from early learning to adult English classes.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Thrive by Five, a public-private partnership, are behind the White Center Early Learning Initiative, which will include a new early-learning center. The effort offers an on-the-ground complement to Washington state's early-learning efforts, launched after Gov. Christine Gregoire created a department for that purpose.

With money, initiatives will now include outreach to families in their homes, free prenatal care and childbirth specialists fluent in languages from Somali and Spanish to Mandarin and Vietnamese. Home visits by nurses and teachers provide a bridge between services and families unsure of how to navigate them.

Government and private entities together present an impressive show of force. This is the case with White Center. King County Executive Ron Sims' push to eliminate racial and economic disparities plays a role here. County nurses, visiting expectant mothers and mothers of infants, will look for those at higher-than-average risk of having health problems or learning disabilities and link them with services. Early intervention is key.

There's more. A $600,000 national literacy grant is headed to three schools. Reading is key to academic success and almost every school district has a literacy program — or several at every school. These efforts are expensive and hard to sustain in economically struggling districts such as the Highline School District, which serves White Center.

The three elementary schools — White Center Heights, Beverly Park and Mount View — will use part of the money on English language and literacy classes for parents. Brilliant move: Parents gain skills and forge closer ties with their children's schools.

The timing of attention and investment in White Center couldn't be better or more welcomed.