By Lauren Roth

Patti Jo Church-Houle had no idea how many lives she was going to help change.

As she prepares for retirement at the end of June, the preschool director reflected on the arc of her career, which has been closely tied for three decades to hotelier Harris Rosen’s investment in preschool and college scholarships. The efforts Rosen began have become a powerful method to improving the fortunes of Orange County communities and families.

Church-Houle first helped Rosen establish preschool programs at two home day cares in 1995, just about a year after he started the Tangelo Park Program in the neighborhood close to his first hotel. Over the years, her role grew until she was overseeing preschools in not only Tangelo Park, but Parramore as well.

Charles “Chuck” Dziuban, director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida, has been following the programs for decades.

“Conceptually, it’s simple. Preschool. School. College,” he said. “We know it works. Thousands of people - their families are better. Their lives are better.”

Over the years, more than 1,200 children have attended a Rosen preschool and more than 600 have graduated high school - with more than 400 earning college scholarships, said Dziuban, who is also retiring from UCF at the end of June.

“What our program does – it gives people hope,” Church-Houle said. As students learned, the program also offered workshops for families. “Parents wanted their children to be prepared for school,” she said.

Church-Houle was a teacher at Tangelo Park Elementary when she first heard that the owner of Rosen Hotels & Resorts was considering a major philanthropic effort in the neighborhood, which at the time was experiencing high crime.

She became the one to create the curriculum and work with home day care providers to implement it consistently.

Over the years, Rosen hoped others would replicate the elements of his program in communities all over the country. When they did not, he decided to expand his program to Parramore, a much larger community with more complex challenges.

And Church-Houle’s efforts were so successful that Rosen tapped her to oversee the much larger Parramore preschool - located inside the OCPS Academic Center for Excellence – in 2017.

Church-Houle even provided the key ideas behind the design for the Rosen Preschool space, which looks like a cheerful town square with murals of Orlando-inspired scenes on the walls.

She is retiring as senior executive director of Rosen Preschools and Home Day Cares in Tangelo Park and Parramore. And while she said it is hard to leave, her life has been enriched by the students whose lives she has changed.

At the end of the 2026 school year, dozens of tiny students in purple and gold graduation gowns wowed a standing-room-only crowd of parents and supporters in the town square area she designed at the Parramore preschool.

They counted in Chinese, solved math problems, recited poetry and sang “God Bless America” and “Golden” by HuntrX.

It was an emotional scene decades in the making.

Church-Houle, who was named an Orlando Magazine Woman of the Year in 2025, said she is just thankful to have had the opportunity to do so much. She said she misses Rosen, who died in 2024.

“He believed in hard work,” she said. And she misses being able to talk to him for his advice. The children in the preschools have become like her own, she said. “So many memories.”