A hub for many child-care activities opens in Seattle's White Center

White Center's new early-learning center is a beautiful new building outfitted with the best — with lots of shiny red tricycles, all-wood tables and chairs and an art studio between every two rooms.

What happens in those rooms is, of course, more important than what they look like.

But the building is the most concrete sign to date that the White Center Early Learning Initiative is serious about preparing every one of the community's 3,000 children for kindergarten.

Four years ago, government, business and philanthropic leaders announced a major effort to improve early-childhood education in Washington state. A year later, they chose two communities where they hoped to show that early support can dramatically improve the performance of low-income children in school.

One was in Yakima, the other was White Center, a King County neighborhood south of Seattle with a high poverty rate and many immigrants.

Now many of the White Center programs are getting under way. The new center — dedicated Saturday — is one big, key piece of the effort.

The building will be a hub for many early-learning activities. Stay-at-home parents, for example, will bring their children to the center for play-and-learn groups. There will be weekly parenting sessions in the evening, and training classes for child-care providers.

But most of the building is being used as a preschool and child-care center for up to 134 children, a place designed to show what high-quality care looks like.

"We set this up as a laboratory, a place where people can see and experience cutting-edge strategies for working with kids," said John Bancroft, the center's executive director.

Preference is given to low-income families, as well as children who are homeless, disabled or in foster homes.

The center, called the Educare Early Learning Center, is the 10th such center in the nation, modeled after one in Chicago that's been very successful in preparing children from low-income families for school.

In a study of five Educare centers, including Chicago, the average school-readiness scores of the children was close to the national average.

In White Center now, in contrast, many kindergartners are behind from the day they arrive at school. At White Center Heights Elementary, just a few hundred feet from where the new Educare Center stands, Principal Dave Darling says only about 16 percent of his kindergartners score at the proficient level on a literacy test.

Darling, who has been involved with the White Center early-learning effort from the beginning, says he believes it will help more children stay on track, and that schools like his won't have to use so many resources trying to help them catch up.

The White Center community is excited, too, says Sili Savusa, who works for Southwest Youth and Family Services and is a member of the Highline School Board.

Community leaders have been involved in the effort from its beginnings, working alongside the project's many public and private partners, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has been the biggest funder to date.

Many of the parents also are enthusiastic about changes they've seen in their children since they started attending the Educare program, which began in temporary locations before the new building was finished.

One is Ethel Nkhalamba, who said her 4-year-old son is more social and creative since he started coming. She says she's worked with his teacher to set goals for him, such as learning his numbers. She's been surprised at how fast he's progressed, moving quickly from the single digits into double ones.

Another is Beatrice Harper, who says the Educare Center helped her and her son through a difficult time, when she returned home after completing a yearlong drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation program. She said she's learned parenting skills that have improved their relationship. One example: She's learned how to criticize his behavior, she said, without criticizing him as a person.

Now Harper works as a drug and alcohol counselor herself and is also going to college — something she says she couldn't do without knowing her son is in a place where staff care about him as much as she does.

"Even if you're low-income ... that doesn't mean you can't access quality care," she said. "There are breaks in life."

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com