Lena Pope Early Learning Centers Voted Best of Child Care

The Early Learning Alliance celebrates its partner Lena Pope, which was recently voted Best of Child Care by 76107 Magazine and a Best of Fort Worth Reader Pick for Best Child Care!

Lena Pope operates two Early Learning Centers (ELCs) in Fort Worth dedicated to ensuring children are Kindergarten-ready by integrating social-emotional learning alongside evidence-based curricula, encouraging family engagement, and offering low student-to-teacher ratios regardless of a families’ ability to pay.

When asked what the awards mean to Lena Pope, Director of Early Learning Programs Jennifer Carpenter noted, “It means that our families and our broader community see the important early childhood education work that we are doing. It tells me that they appreciate our commitment to providing the very highest quality care and it tells me that we are trusted.”

Lena Pope has been actively involved with the Early Learning Alliance since ELA’s launch in 2013. Lena Pope’s vision that children, families, and caregivers thrive closely aligns with ELA’s vision of a Tarrant County where every child has the foundation they need to succeed in school and in life. The Lena Pope ELCs, along with every child care program in ELA’s network, benefitted from being a part of the Alliance when COVID-19 threatened the child care industry.

“ELA’s support during the pandemic was invaluable to our early learning centers and helped ensure that our early learning community in Tarrant County remained strong and viable,” Jennifer Carpenter said.

As anyone who works in early learning knows, the work is never done. Lena Pope is currently preparing for the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) site visit at their UNTHSC ELC campus. The Sanguinet ELC campus earned NAEYC accreditation in 2021, and Lena Pope administrators and teachers have been working hard through the self-study process towards their goal of accreditation for UNTHSC campus.