Raze Early Learning & Development Center

🌸🐣 You’re Invited to an Easter Egg Hunt! 🐣🌸

Raze Early Learning and Development Center is excited to partner with Kings Chapel to host a fun-filled Easter Egg Hunt for our community!

Date: Saturday April 4, 2026

Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location: 6519 N Lidgerwood Spokane, Wa 99208

Bring your little ones out for a morning full of joy, connection, and celebration! There will be egg hunts, laughter, and plenty of fun surprises for the kids to enjoy. This is a beautiful opportunity to gather as a community and create lasting memories together.

✨ Come ready to hunt, play, and celebrate the season with us!

✨ Don’t forget your baskets!

We can’t wait to see you there!

🚨 11,000 Washington Families Could Lose Access to Child Care Assistance 🚨

A recent estimate from BrightSpark shows that around 11,000 families who qualify for child care assistance may not be able to enroll if House Bill 2689 moves forward.

Child care assistance programs help parents work, attend school, and provide stability for their children. Limiting access means thousands of families could be forced to make impossible choices between employment and caring for their children.

For many families—especially working parents and those already facing economic barriers—this support is not a luxury. It is essential for family stability and child development.

We must continue advocating for policies that support families, strengthen the child care workforce, and ensure children have safe, nurturing environments while their parents work.

💬 What do you think about this proposed change?

📢 Stay informed. Stay engaged. Our families deserve better.

3-Month Community Update

Spokane… look what we’re building together.

In just three months, our enrollment has more than quadrupled. We are now at 45% of our daytime capacity — and still growing. We’ve opened two additional classrooms (Toddler 2 and our School Age room), and we currently have space available for children 12 months–13 years.

But Raze was never just about enrollment numbers.

Programming That Wraps Around Families

Our Mental & Behavioral Health Program continues to serve three childcare centers, making behavioral health supports available to over 200 students and their families, while also providing mental health support to the teachers and administrators who care for them.

Our expanded Before & After School Program now includes transportation, holiday care, and non-school day programming.

We’ve also launched Emergency Respite Care Services, already supporting two families — one short-term and one long-term — because the village shows up when it matters most.

Community Engagement & Cultural Celebration

Through a powerful collaboration with New Hope Baptist Church, DoorDash, the General Baptist Convention of the Northwest, the Spokane Area Ministers’ Wives and Ministers’ Widows Fellowship, and the Spokane Ministers Fellowship — we helped feed 250 families through the community turkey drive.

We attended the non-profit fundraising event put on by Shades of Motherhood Network. This event was a celebration of both ingenuity and joy.

We hosted our first annual Children’s Kwanzaa Celebration, celebrating with over 30 community families in partnership with Shades of Motherhood Network and the Carl Maxey Center.

In January, we marched in the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade organized by Ms. Freda Gandy of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center.

We marched with infant, toddler, preschool teachers, board members, and families — visibly affirming that dismantling the preschool-to-prison pipeline begins in early childhood spaces.

Our Executive Director also authored a piece in The Black Lens addressing the quiet erosion of Black American history in public spaces.

At Raze, narrative protection is pipeline disruption.

We advocated before City Council in support of the MLK Day and Juneteenth resolution — affirming these as essential American civic observances rooted in constitutional struggle and liberation.
Our message was clear:
Protecting Black history protects our children’s understanding of citizenship and belonging.

We visited Capitol Hill to advocate for children and families — speaking on childcare access, immigration supports for the Haitian community, housing stability, Medicaid access, and more. Special thank you to our coalition Take All and community partner Waters Meet for their leadership and sponsorship.

Our Executive Director:
• Delivered the keynote for the Black Student Union at Spokane Falls Community College, speaking on dismantling the preschool-to-prison pipeline one village member at a time.
• Spoke on a Black Lens panel addressing the crisis of dyslexia and dysgraphia in Black children — and how Raze is intentionally addressing early literacy gaps before they become disciplinary pathways.
• Appeared on the Everyday Mentors Podcast to discuss perseverance and building vision from the ground up.
• Served on a panel for Rasiens Dream advocating to end Female Ge***al Mutilation within the Massai Tribe.
• Spoke for Leadership Spokane on the village’s responsibility to disrupt systemic inequities at their root

We were also proud to see our very own Jordyn Bower, Raze High School Classroom Aide, featured in The Black Lens and at the Northwest Passages Black Voices Symposium — representing the next generation of leadership rising from within our village.

Representation is not accidental. It is cultivated.

We were also honored to sponsor After Dark: An R&B Affair, showcasing local artists through live performance, curated by photographer Kemoni.

🏆 Recognition & Awards

For her work through Raze Development, our Executive Director was honored as:
• NAACP Community Champion Award recipient
• The Spokesman-Review Woman of the Year
• Nominee for the YWCA Women of Achievement Award

This is only our first three months.

This Spokane village is not just watching — it’s participating. It’s building. It’s protecting. It’s advocating. It’s celebrating.

And together, we are dismantling the preschool-to-prison pipeline — one child, one family, one classroom, one partnership at a time.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts highlighting stories from the Raze classrooms and Village Support — because this movement is just getting started.

Grateful. Proud. And hopeful.

Tonight, City Council voted 6–1 to pass resolution 2025-0123 reaffirming our community’s commitment to honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, two defining moments in our nation’s journey toward justice and freedom.

Thank you to everyone who sent letters, signed up to testify, shared messages of support, and showed up in solidarity. Your voices mattered. Your presence mattered. And this outcome reflects that.

I also want to thank Spokane City Council for affirming that MLK and Juneteenth remain essential to our collective story and values as a community.

This was never about politics. It was about standing up when our shared history and the holidays that honor it are diminished and choosing clarity over silence.

Onward. 🖤
President Lisa Gardner