CITY TERRACE : Families Learn, Play at New Center

The children were ecstatic as they ran down the stairs Monday to enter the new Eastside Family Literacy Center for the first time. Two of them kissed the walls and shouted, “Our school, our school!”

No longer will the Strengthening Family Ties program for children and their parents be conducted in two spare classrooms at the Garfield Community Adult School. And gone are the days when the family center teachers have to go out of their way to take a child to the bathroom.

The 3,600-square-foot center, next to the adult school at 831 N. Bonnie Beach Place, more than doubles the space for the 65 children of Garfield students. They now have a large activity room, a classroom for the 2-year-olds, a nap room, kitchen, teachers’ office and seven bathrooms.

Outside, they will plant a garden and soon they will have new playground equipment.

“We’re all are just trying to get used to the space,” said teacher Renee Haun, who has worked with the program since it began last year.

Parents and children spend half an hour together eating lunch, then another half-hour working on activities together.

Last week, the children donned plastic aprons, squished their hands in trays of paint and used their palms as paintbrushes on large paper hearts. Others rolled out gobs of molding clay and cut out shapes with cookie cutters.

After that, the children napped or were handed over to teachers and aides while the teen-age mothers attended one of three parenting classes required of them each week. Adult parents must attend one such class a week.

“It’s a big help,” said Sally Thomas, 17, who is taking classes to earn a high school diploma. Her 2-year-old son, Raymond De La Cerda, is enrolled in the program. “A lot of the teen parents just know one way of living. Here, we learn that we’re not the only ones going through this.”

Garfield Community Adult School Principal Dolores Diaz-Carrey got the idea for the center by watching some of the teen-age parents at the school. Often, she said, they would hand their children to their mothers and go off on their own.

That--and the fact that only 1.5% of the children on the Eastside attend preschool, leaving them two or three years behind their peers when they begin kindergarten--was the impetus to finding funding and starting the program.

“We’re reaching the whole family,” Diaz-Carrey said. “We believe that by strengthening family ties and supporting the education of entire families we can achieve our goal.”

With 100 children on the waiting list, Diaz-Carrey is hoping to find more private funding to add staff. The center has room for 75 children at a time, but it is far from capacity because the children attend only during the hours their parents are enrolled in classes.

At capacity, the center would cost $400,000 per year to operate, and none of that money comes from the Los Angeles Unified School District, Diaz-Carrey said. She is seeking people to sponsor a child at $1,500 per year. The center has received funding from United Way and other charitable organizations.

Students pay just $5 per week to cover snacks, making it easier for them to enroll their children.

Haun and other staff work with children and parents, teaching both to express themselves and learn together.

“The first time they come in, they’re a mom and then they’re a student,” she said. “(Parents) know that their child is in a warm, caring environment, and that allows them to study better.”