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School lays foundation for youngsters

By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 8, 2008 at midnight

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Preschooler Nadia Brooks leans back during a lesson at the HOPE Center. The center offers classes to youngsters who are at-risk, gifted or may have developmental disabilities.

Photo by Preston Gannaway © The Rocky

Preschooler Nadia Brooks leans back during a lesson at the HOPE Center. The center offers classes to youngsters who are at-risk, gifted or may have developmental disabilities.

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The HOPE Center sits on the corner of Bruce Randolph Avenue and Elizabeth Street. It’s been there for almost 20 years, occupying an older, tidy residential neighborhood, blending in the way a doctor’s office might until you get close enough to hear the children on the playground.

If you’re a long-timer in this city, you might remember this corner, how the building sat empty most of nearly two decades, a sad, graffiti-marred shell of an old grocery store until the little school moved in and brought with it, as its name advertises, hope.

But not hope alone. Hope only gets a person so far without hard work, without perseverance, without opportunity.

About 150 children a day attend morning and afternoon classes at the center. They come bobbing through the door, sunny little beings, and watching them, I harbor the same hope I have for my own children, that their curiosity and love of learning remain with them their whole lives.

Nearly all the students are preschoolers, but the school has a kindergarten for gifted children. It is a bright, cheerful place where sunlight floods the lobby and the young students’ drawings and stories are displayed in the halls.

It’s a small school, eight classrooms, a staff of 22, and that gives the center a warm family feeling detectable even to strangers. It’s a good school, a Denver Public School partner. For nine years in a row, it has received the highest rating — four stars — from Colorado’s Qualistar Early Learning.

Once upon a time, 47 years ago to be exact, the HOPE Center got its start as a school for children with special needs. Over time, the center began to focus on early childhood education, on the little ones from lower-income neighborhoods where the notion that we all started in the same place in life and therefore have the same opportunities is revealed for the myth it is.

What we know, what we have known for a long time, is that children from low-income families tend to be the children of parents who have high school educations or less. We know lower-income families tend to move more. We know lower-income families tend to be headed by single parents, by teen parents.

Make no mistake, none of these facts has anything to do with how much a family loves their child or how much they want their child to succeed in this world. A parent’s dreams cannot be measured by the size of a bank account.

But they do have a whole lot to do with how well a child will do in school. Sit down with Gerie Grimes, the center’s executive director, and what you will find is a woman who wants, yes, to make sure parents of limited means have an option for their children, a safe, high-quality school. But she also understands precisely what is at stake for her families, their children, for our city. If they don’t get the start they need now, they may never catch up.

The center runs on tuition, which can be a stretch for some parents. Full-time services, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., cost at least $806 a month. Those who qualify get help through the county Child Care Assistance program. The parents of 4-year-olds who will enter kindergarten the following year also qualify for some tuition help through Denver’s Preschool Program. Scholarships are available to children in the gifted program.

But times are tough. Parents are making difficult choices. The rocky economy and increased competition from traditional schools adding preschool classes have left the center with unused class space. Grimes spends a lot of time fundraising to bolster teachers’ salaries, provide additional training, buy books. Parents, staff, teachers are all recruiters.

“I finally talked my best friend into bringing her son here,” says office manager Sandra Garcia, who has a son, nephew and niece at the school. “I said, look, between 21/2 and 4, our kids’ brains are sponges. This is the age when they learn the most.”

I catch Gloria Simpson as she drops off her 3-year-old grandson, Makhi Davis. “This is one of those schools you hope never goes away,” she says. “I was a counselor and a teacher and I am all about the three “r’s” — reading, writing, ’rithmetic. They build that foundation here and if the kids can get that foundation, they can do anything.”

In that way, the HOPE Center is more than a school. It is a way to even the playing field. It is a launching pad and a threshold.

HOPE Center

* Purpose: To provide high-quality child care, preschool and kindergarten for children, including special needs and gifted children. Also to help adults with developmental disabilities with vocational skills.

* Year founded: 1947

* People helped: About 200 students, ranging from 2 1/2 to 8 years old

* Staff: 22 at preschool

* Volunteers: 40

* Budget: $1.7 million

* Web site: hopecenterinc.org

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com