News

Tanise Cox (right) has worked at the Achievement Centers for Children & Families in Delray Beach since 1991. Her daughter Trenyce Cox, 21, now works there along with her mother. Photo provided

By Ron Hayes

Since 1969, the Achievement Centers for Children & Families in Delray Beach has given kids from low-income homes an education.

For 33 years, it has given Tanise Cox a living, and a life.

“My two boys, Denard and Denyveaux, were enrolled at the center in 1990, so I began volunteering,” she recalls, “and then, after I’d volunteered perhaps a year, Nancy Hurd, the CEO at the time, asked me if I wanted to work there.”

Cox was employed by a temp agency then, with unstable hours, no benefits, little future — and two small boys.

“I always wanted to work with kids,” she says, “so this was a blessing.”

On May 1, 1991, she arrived as a preschool teacher, helping children ages 3-5 learn to name colors and shapes, maybe even tie their shoes.

She shone, and soon advanced to curriculum specialist, helping to develop lesson plans and to ensure supplies were on hand to implement those plans.

She shone again, and was named a director, with a role in hiring.

In time, her success at the center was becoming a bit expensive. Her family had been living in a subsidized housing development, and as her salary grew, so did her rent.

Then Nancy Hurd arrived with another blessing.

“She told me about Habitat for Humanity,” Cox says.

Jimmy Carter did not help build her three-bedroom home off Swinton Avenue, but Cox does live in the city’s first Habitat house.

“To qualify, you have to put in 500 hours helping build Habitat homes,” she explains. “They call it sweat equity, so my house was ready for months before I could move in. I was working at ACCF during the week and then putting in long hours on Saturdays to make my 500 hours.”

She laughs at the memory. “I was on the roof, I was in the yard, I was doing everything.”

The Achievement Centers for Children & Families gave her a job, and then it helped her get a house.

By 2000, she was directing the agency’s after-school program, and three years later, another child arrived.

“When I was pregnant with Trenyce, I’d already been working at ACCF for 12 years,” she says.

Trenyce Cox is 21 now, and both mother and daughter joke that she was attending the center even before she was born. She kept right on, leaving when she was 18 after benefiting from the center’s entire curriculum.

“When Trenyce first went to public school, the kindergarten teacher said she was way ahead in her colors and numbers,” her mother says. “I made sure they knew she’d been to ACCF.”

Now Trenyce works there along with her mother. When she was a child, the center taught her to play drums, banging on painted plastic buckets.

Today, the kids have real drums, thanks to a generous donor, and Trenyce Cox is teaching a new generation to find the beat.

“The center really is a family,” she says. “Some of the counselors treat you like you’re their own children, and then you bond with other children, and that bond goes on for years.”

On May 1, Tanise Cox will have worked at the Achievement Centers for Children & Families for 34 years. She was 23 when she arrived; she is 57 now. Her boys are grown men, and her daughter is a student at Florida Atlantic University. She has grown and so has the center.

In 1969, it was a small child care service for working mothers, meeting in spaces donated by churches.

Today, it has a main campus and multiple programs at three sites in Delray Beach.

Four years ago, Cox moved from the after-school program to become director of facilities and fleet, overseeing maintenance and making sure the employees have had their physicals, and that drivers of ACCF’s four buses have their current chauffeur’s licenses.

One day, a child she had known while directing the after-school program returned as an adult and working for Island Air, the local firm that maintains the center’s air conditioning.

“And he remembered me,” Cox says. “They come back and hug me, and some have children here and tell me, ‘My baby’s here. Make sure you watch over my baby.’

“The Achievement Center has meant the world to me,” she says. “It’s meant homeowner help, a career, and an education for my kids. I’m not going anywhere. I’m done.

“I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

For more information about Achievement Centers for Children & Families, call 561-276-0520 or visit achievementcentersfl.org.

NOMINATE SOMEONE TO BE A COASTAL STAR
Send a note to news@thecoastalstar.com or call 561-337-1553.