For decades, families like Nasia Peterson’s have cycled through Good Street Learning Center, a South Dallas/Fair Park child care center that working parents can afford at $90 to $134 a week. Her husband and their five children spent their early years there.
But now, Peterson says the center could close soon. Center leaders dispute an immediate shutdown, saying they expect to stay open even as a funding crisis leaves the runway unclear. Parents say there’s no comparable affordable option nearby, especially for families who rely on public transit.
Center director Gwendolyn Sneed says they are fighting to remain open, pointing to pending grants and a push to rebuild their board.
But Sneed also acknowledges leadership cannot promise what will happen after January. “I don’t know about 2026,” she said.
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The numbers are stark: Enrollment is down to 15 children against a licensed capacity of 100. Staffing is down to two teachers from a pre‑pandemic total of nine. The center is scrambling for operating cash while recruiting a hands‑on board to help with grants, sponsorships and staffing. Dallas ISD provides Good Street an annual $23,000 stipend through its pre‑K partnership.
Founded in 1952 as a church‑run child care ministry, the center operates in a church‑owned building. The church does not charge rent, but leaders say upkeep falls on the center.
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Good Street Learning has applied for funding from The Crystal Charity Ball in Dallas and H-E-B’s Community Investment Program, Sneed said. She says the award decisions won’t occur until February or March.
“That first quarter of 2026 would be pretty much a defining time for us,” board chair Jasper Daniels said. “We will know for sure whether or not we’re going to get the necessary assistance.”
The center’s origin
The purpose of the center is clear: to ensure “the working poor in South Dallas will have a place to put their children and keep them on a daily basis, [and] teach them something while they go to work,” Daniels said.
According to center leaders and the organization’s published history, Good Street’s child care ministry began under the Rev. C.A.W. Clark Sr. with trustees, deacons and church members.
Toddlers teacher Angela Nails holds 1-year-old Jayden White’s hand while a group of students walks to class at Good Street Learning Center, Inc. on Dec. 16, 2025, in Dallas.
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Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
An advisory committee chaired by Dr. B.E. Dade, with early childhood specialist Willene Dade as a resource, set standards around space, safety, sanitation, nutrition and staff training, and secured the city of Dallas operations permit in 1952.
The program has operated at the same site since then, originally at the Watson Memorial Mission on what was then Hatcher Street, Sneed said. In 1992, it moved into the new C.A.W. Clark Community Center built on that property, she said. The city later renamed the street Elsie Faye Heggins.
Sneed has led the center since October 2001, expanding partnerships such as Educational First Steps, Child Care Group, prekindergarten programs with Dallas ISD, and accreditation with the National Accreditation Commission for Early Care and Education Programs.
Jayden White, 1, climbs low shelves in the toddlers classroom before morning prayers at Good Street Learning Center, Inc. on Dec. 16, 2025, in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
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Leaders and parents describe multiple generations of families continuing to enroll their children at the center, which has served over 2,000 students, ages 18 months to 12 years old.
The center is also four-star certified with the Texas Rising Star program. That’s the highest assessment level available through criteria like teacher-child interactions and program management.
“We don’t have to do a lot of marketing, because we’re serving third- and fourth-generation family members,” Sneed said. “Even now, the children that we have, they’ve had family members that have come through.”
The center’s challenges
The center’s issues began when they closed for a week during the pandemic, Sneed said. Some of their staff members contracted coronavirus and didn’t come back.
Without as many teachers, the center can’t serve as many students, Sneed said. But without enough students, the center lacks the funding from tuition to pay staff.
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The center also competes with Dallas ISD’s free pre‑K programs, even though it formed a pre‑K partnership with the district in 2008.
Toddlers teacher Angela Nails lists off books of the Bible with students at Good Street Learning Center, Inc. on Dec. 16, 2025, in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
“Several years ago when they started taking 4-year-olds, we lost our 4-year-old population,” Sneed said. “So then they came up with the partnership where the children could come here.”
The school district now enrolls 3- and 4-year-olds into free pre-K programs, Sneed said. But “that’s cutting right into the heart of early care and education” for the center, which can only charge parents for after-school or extended care services since DISD covers the core school hours, she said.
Dallas ISD provides an annual funding stipend of $23,000 to Good Street as part of its pre‑K partnership with the center, according to a Friday evening statement from Dallas ISD spokesperson Nina Lakhiani. She said the district does not have discretionary or board‑directed funding available, and that contracts executed after the district’s budget is set at the start of the fiscal year cannot be amended.
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If Good Street reduces capacity or closes, Lakhiani said, the district will guide families through transfers to nearby options, including Joseph J. Rhoads Learning Center and Charles Rice Learning Center.
For the center’s leadership, the crisis at Good Street Learning is intertwined with challenges facing Good Street Baptist Church. Daniels, the board chair, said he sent letters to the church pastor, deacons and trustees to seek financial assistance and help finding grant writers, fundraisers and marketers.
“A large portion of the expenses at the C.A.W. Clark Community Center is paid by the Learning Center, thus at the demise of the Learning Center, the Social Service Center could become collateral damage,” according to Daniels’ April 2024 letter.
Director Gwendolyn Sneed flips through letters of endorsement from parents of students at Good Street Learning Center, Inc. on Dec. 16, 2025, in Dallas. The learning center, a nonprofit, is at risk of closing in 2026 due to funding difficulties.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
The pandemic also hurt churches. Good Street Baptist lost members to COVID, including one of the center’s board members and another church member who used to help the center, Sneed said.
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Leaders frame the next steps as a joint push: Stabilize staffing, rebuild the hands‑on board, secure grants, and address facility needs while keeping families served. Keeping Good Street open could also require five new full‑time caregivers, plus support staff and funds for security and building upkeep, Sneed said.
‘A generational place’
If Good Street Learning closes, it would become the latest in a wave of Texas child care closures since the pandemic.
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, told The Dallas Morning News last year that over 5,000 child care centers have closed in Texas since the pandemic. That trickles down to a loss of nearly 75,000 child care seats in 2024 alone, according to the advocacy nonprofit Children at Risk.
At Good Street, families and teachers describe the stakes in stark terms: affordability, access and stability for their kids.
Brenda Holmes pulls the door open for daughter Aniyah Cossey, center, and granddaughter Ariel Holmes-Aguora while taking the 3-year-olds to their toddlers class at Good Street Learning Center, Inc. on Dec. 16, 2025, in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
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“This child care center is the only child care center that working parents can afford to pay out of pocket,” Peterson said.
If a working parent can’t afford to put their kids in child care, then they’re at risk of losing their job, Peterson said. That means they’re at risk of losing their home and having to decide if they should feed themselves, or save money to pay rent, she said.
Brenda Holmes said the center provides exceptional care, including providing meals and teaching manners, hygiene and respect to her adopted daughter and granddaughter.
“It’s just like you’re taking your child to your grandmother’s place,” Holmes said.
Rikki Bonet, a pre-K teacher at Good Street, has been teaching since 2000 and has been at Good Street for nine years. She transitioned there after her previous employers downsized.
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Pre-k teacher Rikki Bonet sets up a container of water and floating toys for students Toraj Russ, 3, and Aziza Fabien, 3, to play with at Good Street Learning Center, Inc. on Dec. 16, 2025, in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Surrounded by students on a recent morning, Bonet said her Good Street students have a “100% readiness” rate for transitioning to kindergarten.
“This is a generational place people love because you get an education along with the devotion, the church side,” Bonet said. “…I just really hope it doesn’t close, because I love it here.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.
Recent headlines: Dallas Morning News, Wednesday, “Hundreds of Voters Turned Away at Polls” and ”Residents frustrated after being redirected to their assigned sites.”
The Texas Tribune, Wednesday, “In Dallas County, frustration and confusion after GOP forces switch to precinct-based voting.”
VoteBeat Texas, Tuesday, “Primary voters frustrated and confused after Dallas County switches to precinct-based voting.”
All this despite the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court spending $1 million on a voter outreach campaign to alert voters to the changes.
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Thanks, Dallas County Republicans, you’ve wasted our time and money!
Kimberly Farrar, Richardson
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An egregious fraud
Having recently voted in the 2026 Texas primary elections, I should feel a degree of satisfaction for meeting my civic duty and my obligation as a U.S. citizen. Why is it that I feel as if I am perpetuating an egregious fraud?
The rules governing this election obligate me to declare that I am either a Democrat or a Republican before I am allowed to participate. I am neither. What are my options?
I can play along, pick a side and vote for the candidates on my ballot that I truly support while being unable to express that same support for other candidates because their names do not appear. Or I can join the vast majority of my fellow citizens and choose not to participate at all.
I was always taught that in a democracy, elections are fair and free. How can elections be considered fair when (by rule) the names of half of the candidates are not even on my ballot?
May the best candidate win, even if I was never given the chance to vote for him/her.
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Wayne Hardey, northwest Dallas/Disney Streets
Needs more transparency
Re: “City Hall debate is a rerun of AAC debacle — We need to slow down, insist on transparency and get this right,” by Laura Miller, Wednesday Opinion.
Laura Miller is right about everything! There isn’t enough transparency about the deal with City Hall. The iconic building is unique and one of a kind and should be repaired and preserved.
I.M. Pei personally mixed the concrete to a specific color to appear warm in the Texas sun. The city council should be ashamed of allowing the building to get into such bad shape.
Paul Taylor, Dallas/Oak Lawn
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No Cowboys Stadium in Dallas
If my memory serves, Laura Miller singlehandedly quashed Jerry Jones’ desire to build Cowboys Stadium in downtown Dallas. The tremendous benefits Dallas residents would have received were innumerable, and it would have enhanced property values in an area that desperately needed that.
I find it ironic that Miller is opining on anything related to building in Dallas.
Michael DeMott, Frisco
Laura Miller had the right idea
I grew up in Plano, and I live in Richardson now, so I’ve been observing Dallas up close for nearly seven decades. One thing that sticks out is that Dallas is really good at building glitzy shiny structures, but it’s not good at taking care of them.
I read about City Hall, the futuristic building built in 1978 that is becoming unusable largely due to lack of maintenance. Now, they are trying to decide if the building is worth saving, or do they need to build yet another. They build designer bridges, but can’t fix streets and can’t replace aging water lines.
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One of the things I learned in business is to make sure what you have is right and is working properly before branching out into new ventures. It’s that way with infrastructure.
Infrastructure isn’t glamorous, but we certainly notice when it fails. It’s crucial to a modern city.
Years ago, Miller ran for mayor partly on a platform of fixing Dallas’ aging infrastructure. She was ridiculed as the “pothole mayor.” I think she had the right idea.
Steven Ritchey, Richardson
Not a fan of Texas Ranger statue
Re: “’One Riot, One Ranger’ statue finds new home — Sculpture removed from Love Field in 2020 now at Globe Life Field,” Tuesday Metro & Business story.
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As a 50-year fan of the Texas Rangers baseball club, I was extremely disappointed to learn of the relocation of the banished Texas Ranger statue to Globe Life Field. The statue was removed from Love Field for the systemic racist history it represents, as the Rangers are well known for abusing minorities, especially the Mexican-American communities.
Given the ongoing ICE raids and roundups of anyone who looks brown or black, the statue’s new location at the ballpark is questionable at best and insulting at worst to the large Latino fan base the Ranger baseball team enjoys.
The public relations office really struck out with this boneheaded idea. They should have read some Texas history or the book, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.
Tony Torres, Garland
Love letter to Dallas
My most perfect day. I was high up in the mountains and came upon a green pasture filled with wildflowers, including beautiful columbines. There on my left was a worn-down home and Aspen trees, glittering silver to green in the cool gentle wind. And on the ridge before me was a full-grown porcupine just wandering across, coming from the Aspens and heading to the snowcapped mountains. I was 14 and it was a perfect day, time and moment.
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Hold unto these moments. You never know when they can come around. The summer days lumbered on, like the porcupine, but way too quick, it was back to school. Back to W. T. White among my friends.
I miss my youth in Dallas. Times in the creek on hot summer days. Crawling under the wired fence to watch Jesuit High School games, a snowball fight with Dallas police and so much more.
This is my love letter to Dallas.
James K. Waghorne, Wichita Falls
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.
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If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com
Food influencer Keith Lee announced a new phase of his career by becoming an investor in Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, an Asian-fusion restaurant chain with several locations across the U.S.
The announcement was accompanied by a special event at the brand’s Dallas restaurant, where Lee made a public appearance to celebrate the new partnership.
“I love the innovation. I love the way that they move. I love the business mind that they have,” Lee said about his investment in the brand to The News. “I think there is just a bunch of really dope things that we can do together and bring the community together.”
The popular influencer’s presence drew hundreds of people to the restaurant, hoping to meet him in person. Lee interacted with attendees, greeted fans and provided customer service inside the restaurant, taking pictures, chatting and serving menu items.
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Keith Lee (left), influencer, food critic and Dallas resident, speaks to Kristel Clouse as she tells him to visit her Forney restaurant Brunch Room Bistro during an appearance by Lee at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop on Friday, March 6, 2026, in Dallas. Lee has joined the brand as an investor as part of a landmark, multiyear partnership.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
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“Keith is so hot right now, and what we love about him is his authenticity and the way he always supports the community,” said Jeff Galletly, CEO of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop.
Lee, who has more than 20 million followers on different digital platforms, reviews restaurants across the country. In his videos, he usually eats in his car and gives an honest opinion on the food’s quality. After publishing his review, food businesses are impacted either by stratospheric demand or public disapproval.
“I love Dallas. Dallas is amazing,” Lee said. “We have been here for the last year. It’s really quiet, it’s peaceful. I love it out here.”
Keith Lee, influencer, food critic and Dallas resident, puts on an apron during an appearance at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop on Friday, March 6, 2026, in Dallas. Lee has joined the brand as an investor as part of a landmark, multiyear partnership.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
From Dallas, Lee continues traveling across the country to visit restaurants and post his reviews on social media.
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Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is at 2548 Elm St., Dallas. brooklyndumplingshop.com.
Among the many surprises in Tuesday’s primaries, one of the most shocking took place in the Democratic primary for Dallas County district attorney. Amber Givens, a former district court judge with a history of injudicious behavior on the bench, handily beat incumbent John Creuzot, whose leadership and experience in office earned the respect of a wide array of legal and community leaders.
We had expected that Democratic voters would want to retain a public servant who performed his job with diligence and integrity. Creuzot championed innovative, evidence-based programs to address the needs of suspects with mental illness and substance abuse problems.
Instead they elevated someone whose ability to do the job is an open question.
So what happened? We don’t know.
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Were primary voters just uninformed about the vast difference in experience and qualifications? Were they most concerned with the races at the top of the ticket, while ignoring lower ballot races? Judicial and county races often get short shrift.
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Maybe voters viewed Givens as the more progressive of the two candidates, and preferred her politics. Long ago, Creuzot did run for judge as a Republican.
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But as a Democratic district attorney, he’s been a favorite target of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Early in his first term, Creuzot announced his office wouldn’t prosecute low-level theft of basic necessities, partly to keep impoverished, nonviolent offenders out of jail. He later dropped the policy when he found it had little impact on the crime rate. Creuzot also joined several other big-city DAs and sued Paxton after his office tried to impose onerous reporting requirements on local jurisdictions. The DAs won.
Meanwhile, before her victory, Givens was in the news for all the wrong reasons.
In June, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct publicly admonished her for “failing to comply with and maintain professional competence in the law,” in regards to due process and for failing to treat a defendant with “patience, dignity and courtesy.” Givens was also publicly reprimanded for allegedly allowing a court staff member to substitute for her during a virtual bond hearing and for mistreating attorneys in her courtroom. She appealed the rulings and a three-judge panel in Austin re-tried the case late last month but has not yet issued its verdict.
Givens’ campaign website said the incumbent DA’s office denied evidence was missing for some felony cases. In fact, the Dallas Police Department had lost track of or deleted digital files that the DA’s office didn’t know existed. Even highly professional prosecutors and judges can be stymied by failures in other parts of the criminal justice system.
Her first news conference as DA-elect (there is no opposition in November) revealed few specifics about how she plans to run her new office. Givens emphasized that she was vastly outspent by Creuzot, which is true. She wants to establish community justice councils and set strict deadlines to decide whether to seek an indictment in cases of all types. Neither sounds realistic.
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We have to hope for the best, but the record here convinces us Dallas County Democratic voters got this race as wrong as any we can recall.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.
If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com
