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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.