The East Dallas Developmental Center gives a whole new meaning to parent volunteers and involvement in a school.
Originally founded in 1980 as a small, for-profit child-care facility catering to infants and toddlers, EDDC rapidly outgrew its original mission. At the request of parents whose toddlers had “graduated” from EDDC, the center expanded its program in 1983 to include preschoolers and became a private, non-profit corporation governed by parents.
“We’ve been involved in just about every activity the school has had,” says Barbara Kennedy, who chairs the board of directors this year and was president of the Parent Group last year. Her 5-year-old daughter has attended EDDC for two years.
The Parent Group, which functions much like a parent-teacher association (PTA), helps raise money for equipment, programs and supplies and plans projects such as the upcoming redesign of the school’s two playgrounds.
When EDDC moved from its original location in two adjacent houses to a spacious storefront at Skillman and Oram streets two years ago, one board member loaned the school money from her retirement fund to help get the project started.
Other parents donated or located materials and services and later rolled up their sleeves and grabbed hammers and paint brushes to help finish work on the interior.
“Because we actually helped build it, we feel like it really is our school,” Kennedy says.
The school’s staff also has been crucial to the school’s success, EDDC director Linda Laws says.
“We have incredible staff stability here,” says Laws, who started working at the center in 1980 after graduating from Texas Woman’s University.
“All the teachers have been here from 3 to 13 years, and they all have college degrees.”
The school’s founders, Eric Albers and Joanne Everts, no longer are associated with EDDC, but their legacy endures. They believed children should be cared for and educated in small groups according to age and developmental level and that they should remain with the same teacher for an entire year.
As the children grow older, they remain with the same small group of classmates but move up to a new teacher and developmental level each September. Albers and Everts also based their curriculum on experiential learning, in which children are encouraged to have hands-on experience and to learn through play and creativity.
Another bonus for parents is the school’s emphasis on teaching children to eat vegetables and fruits through the foods it serves for lunch and snacks, says parent Denelle Wrightson.
For the past 11 years, EDDC has been a recurring theme in Janiece Upshaw’s life. Her first job out of college was teaching 2-year-olds at the school. She met her future husband through EDDC, watched her now-15-year-old stepson thrive in the program and is about to see her 6-year-old daughter graduate from EDDC into first grade.
After working two years at EDDC, Upshaw went on to open a child-care business and recently accepted a job as child-care services director for the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas.
“My daughter has some of the same teachers my son had years ago,” Upshaw says. “When she started at EDDC at the age of 10 months, it was like I gave her to a group of my friends each morning. I’m so glad I had that early exposure to EDDC because that’s what I thought all child-care was like.”
