Denise Louie Education Center

In order to promote success in school and community, Denise Louie Education Center provides quality, multi-cultural early childhood education services to children and their families. We will respect and preserve each child's individuality, cultural heritage and home language. We will promote personal and social responsibility with integrity and love in a non-sexist, non-violent and non-racist environment.

The organization was founded in 1978 and was named to honor a young Chinese American community volunteer who was killed tragically in 1977. At the time of her death, Denise was heavily involved as a board member of Interim, the International District Improvement Association, a community planning agency which was spearheading the effort to revitalize a decaying, deteriorating International District.

Denise Louie Education Center (DLEC) provides education and family services to low-income children ages three-to-five and their families who live in the Beacon Hill, Sandpoint and Yesler Terrace communities. DLEC's client population is very diverse with 87 percent of parents speaking a language other than English at home.

At DLEC, we focus our curriculum on the unique strengths, interests and needs of each child in our program based on information gathered from child observations, parent/teacher conferences, home visits, and health and developmental screenings. Each child has an individualized plan developed jointly with the parent that lists outcomes in socio-emotional development, literacy, language development, mathematics, physical health and development, science, creative arts and approaches to learning. Because of the wonderful cultural and language diversity of the children and families, we emphasize home language reinforcement and English fluency in classrooms. Our staff are fluent in the many languages spoken by the children and families.

We work closely with the parents to assist them in accessing community resources like: English as a second language classes, employment, health care, food banks, parenting classes, or WIC. We strongly believe that the parents are the child's first teacher. If parents are successful, their children will be successful! Parent involvement permeates every aspect of our programs. Our Policy Council, composed mostly of parents, must approve program decisions that affect children and their families. This opportunity engages parents in our organization and in creating the best educational programs for their children.