Grant brings White Center initiative a step closer to quality child care

After more than a year of planning, the high-profile effort for quality child care in White Center is about to get off the ground.

Thrive by Five, a public-private partnership, today announced the first $12 million in grants for the White Center Early Learning Initiative, including $7 million to build a new early-learning center in White Center's Greenbridge community.

About $2.4 million will come from Thrive by Five. The other $9.4 million, including $7 million to help with construction costs for the center, is a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

It will take three or four years to get all of the initiative's plans under way. Construction on the center won't start until the middle of this year.

The first grants, however, will allow parts of the initiative to get started, such as a doula program, which will pair new mothers with women trained to provide emotional support and guidance, and coaches to help child-care providers improve their services. A child-care center will open at an interim site while its new building is under construction.

The initiative's overall goals are high: access to quality child care for all 3,000 children in White Center, a South King County neighborhood with a high poverty rate and many immigrants.

Thrive by Five is also working on a similar project in Yakima.

The hope is that both projects will show the benefits of what a concentrated effort can do to better prepare all children for school.

"We're doing this on a birth-to-five continuum," said Graciela Italiano-Thomas, chief executive of Thrive by Five. "That's essential if we're really going to make a difference."

Nina Auerbach, CEO of King County's Child Care Resources, said the project is drawing a lot of interest nationally because it's so comprehensive.

"We've never had an opportunity like this to provide such a comprehensive amount of services in one location."

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359