Teacher Tamara Harris, left, works with students Thursday at Ruby Bridges Early Learning Center. (Taylor Balkom/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
A new Vancouver preschool named for American civil rights activist Ruby Bridges recently opened in central Vancouver.
“(The) area, even though it’s so densely populated, is considered an early learning desert,” said Christina Monks, director of culture and development at Educational Opportunities for Children & Families.
In mid-September, the agency opened Ruby Bridges Early Learning Center, 6907 E. 18th St., a site formerly occupied by an HVAC company.
About 63 percent of Washington residents live in a child care desert, according to Child Care for WA.
Educational Opportunities for Children & Families doesn’t offer bus service at all 30 of its early learning centers in Clark County, but it does at Ruby Bridges because of the high need in the neighborhood, Monks said.
The building includes dry-erase walls on which kids can color and modular walls that offer the ability to shift the classroom configurations.
“We had this bad joke where we would say that we were Clark County’s best-kept secret because you see and you hear EOCF and be like, ‘What is that? What do they do?’ ” Monks said. “There’s so many things that we do. It’s not just preschool. We provide wraparound support to families as well.”
The organization connects families to resources, including health screenings, safety guides and mental health support.
“Post-pandemic, our babies came to us in a very different sort of way with bigger behaviors — emotionally, physically — and we’re seeing some things in the classroom that we haven’t seen before,” said Rekah Strong, Educational Opportunities for Children & Families’ chief executive officer. “So we’ve had to be really intentional.”
Earlier this year, Educational Opportunities for Children & Families employees submitted names for the new early learning center. The employee who suggested Ruby Bridges noted that “ ‘Bridges’ could be a great metaphor for the significance of preschool in a child’s life,” according to the organization’s press release.
In 1960, Bridges, then 6, became one of the first Black children to integrate New Orleans’ all-white public school system. She went on to become a well-known civil rights activist, author and speaker.
Bridges has two elementary schools named after her — in Alameda, Calif., and in King County’s Northshore School District.
About 278,000 Washington children ages zero to 5 need child care. Only about 26 percent of these children are served by licensed child care, preschool and/or subsidized child care, according to the state’s Department of Children, Youth & Families.
“Early education is not an entitlement,” Strong said. “It is a basic human right, and people having safe spaces to leave their children is a basic human right.”
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