About Us

Welcome to the the Detroit Lakes Area Learning Center!

The Detroit Lakes Area Learning Center (DLALC) first opened its doors September 4th, 2001.  With a skeleton staff in one makeshift room on the Detroit Lakes MState campus, the DLALC started.  Within months, our location shifted to the 3rd floor of the Detroit Lakes Community and Cultural Center for the next 14 years.  For the 2015-2016 school year to the present, our home is once again the MState campus, giving our students real life college campus exposure.

The DLALC approach to students and families is singular, strategic, and with one fundamental purpose in mind: Identify what is getting in the way of a student being successful academically or socially, and create interventions based on the findings to support growth. With that in mind, this approach can become complicated quickly.  Therefore, the DLALC was created to support multiple needs.  These include chemical and mental health issues, pregnant and parenting teen needs, credit recovery, regional after-school programming (K-12), and regional summer school (K-12).  Detroit Lakes is home to one of six Recovery schools in the state of Minnesota, Lakes Recovery School, a school-within-a-school at the DLALC.  It  serves students who have successfully completed in or out-patient treatment  and have a sincere desire for a clean and sober lifestyle. Chemical dependency services are supported district-wide for preventative services.  Our Teen Age Parent Program (TAPP) serves students who are pregnant and/or parenting.  Programming generated by staff serves students academically and socially with one eye on the future.