Two years since James Lawrence founded Gainesville Empowerment Zone Family Learning Center (GEZFLC) in August 2023, the school and resource center is poised to achieve APPLE’s Gold Seal accreditation and enroll its largest class for 2025-26.
Lawrence opened the school for children ages 6-weeks to 4-years-old with a mission to change public education and fill Alachua County’s achievement gaps among low-income families by also supporting the students’ parents. The school’s resources center hosts and connects parents to free social services in the community.
Lawrence said being in the final stages of applying for APPLE Gold Seal accreditation is exciting after it’s taken over a year to work towards.
Not only would it provide a 20% increase in reimbursements from the Early Learning Coalition, Lawrence said it would secure GEZFLC as a high-quality family learning and childcare center ahead of the school’s third year commencing on Aug. 11.
Lawrence opened GEZFLC as an arm of his non-profit Gainesville For All (GNV4ALL).
As a former editor of the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper in Rochester, New York, Lawrence collaborated with The Gainesville Sun and The Community Foundation to open GNV4ALL in 2016 after noticing racial discrepancies and poverty in Gainesville like what he saw in Rochester.
He said although GNV4ALL became independent of The Gainesville Sun and Community Foundation in 2020, it’s still growing and plans to launch a housing advocacy initiative this July to help curb housing discrimination.
GEZFLC meets out of a building at 1250 NE 18th Ave., Building 11 on Metcalfe Elementary’s property. Lawrence said the Alachua County Public School District lets them occupy the space free of charge and just extended their contract through 2028.
He said the school employs around 15 staff members, all college-trained or Child Development Associate certified. The school caps its capacity at 87 children, but Lawrence said staff were so encouraged by the past year’s class size of 83 that they’re aiming to secure 90 for the 2025-26 year.
As part of GNV4ALL, Lawrence said GEZFLC aims to mobilize the non-profit and business sectors to connect local families to free available resources from education, financial literacy and job assistance to housing, litigation and mental health services.
Some of the school’s partnering organizations include the University of Florida (UF), Gainsville Thrives, the Harn Museum of Art and the Cade Museum.
Twice a month, Lawrence said UF Health’s OB/GYN Mobile Outreach clinic comes to the school to provide resources for moms of GEZFLC students. The Harn also sends buses to take families on field trips to the museum, which Lawrence said is a first-time museum experience for many of the families.
He said the school is already being contacted by other family resources centers wanting to learn how to open schools similar to GEZFLC because of the impact it’s having.
Of the 14 graduating children this year, who started at GEZFLC not knowing how to spell their names, or identify different colors or shapes, Lawrence said all of them were formally assessed as kindergarten ready.
“What we’re doing, we hope, will be a model for other centers that we would open around the county,” he said. “We really want to impact the critical mass. And when you look at how [expansive] the achievement gap is, one school is not success. We need as many of these kinds of schools all around.”
On top of providing $25,000 a year in creative curriculum for infants through toddlers, Lawrence said GEZFLC coaches parents, especially fathers, on how to be involved in their kid’s lives and education, like attending parent teaching conferences and reading with them.
On top of regular literacy nights for parents and a “Dads on Duty” group where fathers can read to their children, the school hosts special events like “Donuts for Dad” on Father’s Day where staff can meet with and come alongside parents.
“[Dads] have been overlooked, or there have been assumptions made that dads don’t care or don’t want to be involved, that they’re dead beats, and that’s just not so,” Lawrence said. “We need dads at the table as well.”
Part of the training for GEZFLC’s teachers and staff comes from the school’s new assistant director, Florence Walker. Lawrence also said the school hired Elizebeth Woods as its newest executive director last month.
Woods brings 20 years of experience in education to GEZFLC after starting her career in high school, with the last 12 years in Jacksonville at Primrose School of Julington Creek, a private preschool chain with locations across the country.
She said she’s served in every role, from teaching infants to managing administration, and said coming to GEZFLC was a “no brainer” given her passion for helping children and their parents after her own challenging childhood and adulthood experiences.
Woods said curtailing the slump in literacy and other issues that affect education starts at home, and GEZFLC’s mission accomplishes that.
“I went from being a stay-at-home mom to a single mom overnight. There were not a lot of resources out there, and I was in Florida, and I [thought] what am I going to do?” Woods said. “This is helping me put both of my true loves together, having that impact and being able to help a family that is in need.”
Lawrence said on top of completing its APPLE accreditation, GEZFLC aims to garner more community support and fundraising to help further the school’s mission.
“I strongly believe that I was called to do this work, I believe so much in it,” he said. “I want to see the change that we’ve all been looking for and praying for and I believe that this can be a part of it to really get the kind of support that it needs and really change up the way things are going.”
