WA State Governor Gary Locke, Randie Gottlieb,
State Superintendent of Public Schools Terry Bergeson
As a result of the notable success achieved by participating schools, EMPIRE was highlighted as a model program by President Clinton's National Initiative on Race. It received the Year 2000 Best Program Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education; and was honored with the Washington State Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Education.
“The program for us has been a success. For the first time it got a team together to focus on multicultural education. When it began, we had no idea what to expect. The sharing with other teams gave us lots of ideas.” (Teacher)
The EMPIRE Program
The UnityWorks School Program is modeled on the award-winning EMPIRE program, for which our Board president, Dr. Randie Gottlieb, served as Executive Director for over a decade. EMPIRE (Exemplary Multicultural Practices in Rural Education) was a consortium of K-12 schools, businesses and community groups in Washington State that had joined together in a collaborative network to encourage positive multicultural change.
Rather than asking the schools to implement a series of standardized multicultural directives from above, EMPIRE
offered pro-active leadership with a grassroots approach that empowered site teams at each school to design and implement their own agendas for change.