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An idea six years ago to create a center in Gainesville aimed at serving low-income families by providing high-quality early learning and child care in an effort to prepare young children from challenged families for kindergarten has finally come to fruition.
The Gainesville Empowerment Zone’s Family Learning Center is scheduled to open Aug. 10 in a building on the Metcalfe Elementary School campus.
The center, located at 1250 NE 18th Ave., will be used to help improve the literacy rate in Gainesville by teaching and providing services to youth ages 6 weeks to 5 years old and their families.
“A lot of blood, sweat and tears have been poured into this project, not only by myself but by tons of people in this community and, in fact, around the country,” said James Lawrence, executive director of Gainesville For All (GNV4ALL), the local nonprofit that spearheaded the project.
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GNV4ALL was initially launched by The Gainesville Sun, an award-winning initiative that eventually spun off as an independent agency with its own non-profit charter in 2021. The agency seeks to find long-term solutions to long-term inequities that often fall along racial lines.
The overall goal of the Family Learning Center is to narrow the achievement gap between Black and white students of all ages, an effort that has seen little progress from the school district under the current administration. In the short term, the center aims to see that students are academically prepared to enter kindergarten.
The center, which will accommodate up to 128 kids, will open with about 87 kids enrolled in order to keep a low teacher-to-student ratio.
“Our goal is to reach low-income Black families because Black children are faring worse in Alachua County schools,” Lawrence told The Sun in 2022. “We have the most abysmal achievement gap in the county and nation.”
The building features a dining room, laundry room, two offices, rooms for children of different ages, a storage room, a laboratory and an outdoor classroom.
Lawrence thanked the Alachua County School Board, which in February 2022 approved a lease to GNV4ALL for three years after former Superintendent Karen Clarke suggested the more than 8,000-square-foot Metcalfe building be used to house the center.
“Without them this wouldn’t be possible,” he said.
Lawerence said GNV4ALL has raised more than $1 million for the center. He said the city of Gainesville and Alachua County each donated $350,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds. An additional $300,000 was given by local and online donors.
“It’s not only money that people have donated, but also their time and energy, because they believe in what we’re trying to do,” he said.
Beyond education and child care, the center also will connect the families it serves with a wide range of services such as parent coaching, job counseling and affordable housing assistance. Lawerence noted that they are looking to attract top-quality talent, and are offering employees both retirement and health insurance benefits.
“We’re going to have to get parents excited,” Lawrence said. “This is more than dropping your kids off. We expect them (parents) to be actively involved. This project is a demonstrative project. We want to redesign public education in the 21st century.”
Those interested in enrolling in the Family Learning Center or working at the center as an employee should email the center’s executive director, Angela Walker, at awalker@gezflc.org or gnv4all@gmail.com. Interested parties also can call 352-225.391.
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