The Bezos Academy has partnered with the local organization Juliette Fowler Communities to launch a new tuition-free preschool campus in Dallas. The new Bezos Academy campus will sit in Dallas’ Lakewood neighborhood and serve 60 children ages 3-5.
The campus will include three classrooms, a workspace for educators and an outdoor play area.
The Bezos Academy will cover operating costs for its preschool at no cost to eligible families, providing everything the children need from three meals a day to learning materials. This will be the sixth Bezos Academy preschool announced for the Dallas area to date.
There are campuses in Old East Dallas, North Dallas, Lancaster and Cockrell Hill. Others are planned for Oak Cliff and Denton. There are also schools in Houston and San Antonio, and elsewhere across the country.
Families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level (about $125,000 a year for a family of four) with children aged 3 or 4 are eligible to apply. Admissions will be lottery-based but will prefer foster and homeless children. Bezos Academy is not accepting applications for the new campus yet, but interested families can visit its website to check when applications open.
“Early childhood development is very critical,” Nicole Gann, president and CEO of Juliette Fowler Communities, said. “Why we’re so committed to this partnership is that in the core of Dallas there are what are called childcare deserts where there’s just not enough childcare, and specifically not enough affordable childcare.”“Early childhood development is very critical.” – Nicole Gann, Juliette Fowler Communities
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She added, "So, we find ourselves having an opportunity with Bezos to bring early childhood development to families that might not otherwise be able to access it for themselves, either due to location or affordability.”
Juliette Fowler Communities has always had intergenerational programming for seniors and children. But the organization doesn’t do a lot of work with children in the classroom. This partnership with the Bezos Academy will change that. “This is a natural extension for us because we’ve been facilitating that intergenerational programming,” Gann said.
Allison Leader, a spokesperson for Bezos Academy, said about 50% of children across the country don’t enroll in preschool. “Looking at the data and the drivers of that, what becomes really clear is that affordability and accessibility are the two biggest things preventing parents from being able to give their kids the sort of strength that preschool provides,” Leader said. “That means, ‘Is there something near me and can I afford the thing that’s near me?’”
What Bezos Academy is trying to do, she said, is find places where there are large percentages of kids ages 3–5 not enrolled in preschool and setting up shop there.
Leader said Jeff Bezos went to a Montessori preschool as he grew up with a single mom. “He really credits that experience as giving him those early learning building blocks that help set him up,” she said. “So, when it came time for him to really start thinking about what things he wanted to put his personal wealth into, to focus his philanthropy on, this was one of the things that rose to the top for him.”
She said the Bezos Academy has 19 campuses across the country, with 20 more planned over the next few years, including more in Dallas.
Juliette Fowler Communities serves about 700 children a year, but this new partnership will give it the capacity to help an additional 60 children every year for the next ten years. “I certainly hope that it grows beyond that,” Gann said. An eligible family may find they can receive other services from Juliette Fowler besides childcare. She said, “It's just a nice way to continue to expand our outreach here right on our campus but continue to bring people awareness to the services that we offer.” Gann works with people who spend hundreds of dollars a week on childcare, meaning this partnership could save some families thousands of dollars a year.
She said the programming at the campus will focus on accommodating the children’s needs. “You meet them where they are as an individual and you figure out what are the things that ignite them or to help them thrive,” she said.
The partnership could lead to even greater things.
“I’m just really issuing the call to action to say," Gann said. "If we’re an example of what’s possible, what might else be possible?”
