Gwendolyn Sneed points to photographs of children dressed in white caps and gowns on the wall of Good Street Learning Center in South Dallas.
"1954, class of 1957 — wall of fame," she said proudly. She's been the director of Good Street Learning Center for more than 20 years.
The Baptist church opened the nursery and day school in 1952, when Dallas schools were still segregated. For decades, Good Street has provided South Dallas families a safe place for their children to learn and be cared for.
"And look how large those graduating classes were," Sneed said.
Decades ago, the school had more than 60 preschoolers. Today, Sneed has just five children in her 4-year-old preschool class.
She said enrollment never recovered from the pandemic, and now the nonprofit faces another challenge: the growth of free public pre-K offered by its longtime partner, Dallas ISD.
"It's more like a competition now," Sneed said. "They need seats filled. We need seats filled."
Creating a partnership
Good Street partnered with Dallas ISD in 2008. Sneed said it was because they were already losing 4-year-olds to the district's free pre-K program.
"The school district had literally taken children from us when they began enrolling 4-year-olds," Sneed said. "Because we can't compete with free."
Under the partnership, the child is enrolled in both Dallas ISD and the childcare center. The district provides a certified teacher, while Good Street offers care before and after the school day for a fee. Families at Good Street can drop children off as early as 6:30 a.m. and pick them up as late as 6 p.m.
Today, the district partners with more than 20 childcare centers.
Assistant Superintendent Debbie Ramos said the partnerships give families another option.
Ramos oversees Early Learning and Centralized Development for the district.
"So if they want to go to a partnership center, they have that choice before they're ready for a big school," Ramos said.
But the district has also dramatically expanded pre-K on its own campuses. Nearly every Dallas ISD elementary school now offers full-day Pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds.
'Unintended consequences'
In 2019, Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 3, a sweeping school finance law that required districts to provide full-day pre-K to eligible 4-year-olds.
The law didn't make every Texas 4-year-old eligible for free pre-K. But it required districts already serving eligible children to offer them a full-day program.
Childcare providers say the expansion pulled students away. More 4-year-olds could spend their entire day on public school campuses instead of at childcare centers.
Tim Kaminski, president of the Texas Licensed Child Care Association, said many providers weren't part of the early discussions about how the expansion would affect their businesses.
"What I discovered post those years was when those initial discussions started coming up, childcare providers weren't in the room," Kaminski said. "They weren't at the table."
During a Texas House committee meeting on Trade, Workforce and Economic Development last month, Kaminski told lawmakers about a childcare operator in the League City area who recently lost 65 children from one location in a single week after the local school district announced additional openings.
"As a small business, you can't recover that income," Kaminski said.
He told lawmakers his organization surveyed providers last year and found that they lost an average of 14 children to public schools around the beginning of the school year.
State Rep. Angie Chen Button, the Richardson Republican who chairs the House Committee, acknowledged during the hearing that efforts to expand early childhood education have had "unintended consequences" for private providers.
Why do 3- and 4-year-olds matter to childcare centers?
Early education policy expert Alyssa Morton, CEO and partner at Empower Schools, said older kids are fundamental to the economics of childcare.
"Three- and four-year-olds really anchor the business model," she said.
Babies and toddlers require more caregivers in the classroom and are much more expensive to care of. Older preschoolers can be cared for in larger groups, making them less expensive.
That means tuition from older children can help offset the higher cost of infant and toddler classrooms.
"As districts have expanded pre-K, childcare has faced even more difficult margins," Morton said.
Take enough 3- and 4-year-olds away, and centers may have to raise prices for the families who remain — or struggle to keep classrooms open.
"It gets harder and harder to get childcare, which impacts workforce participation," Morton said. "And it also impacts cost of living and whether people can afford to live in your city."
Kaminski said he doesn't view the issue simply as a competition between school districts and childcare providers.
"I don't blame the school districts," he said. "They're doing what they need to do."
Texas wants more partnerships
Texas lawmakers have increasingly turned to public-private partnerships as one way to address the financial pressure on childcare centers.
House Bill 2, passed in 2025, made several significant changes.
Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, districts and charter schools partnering with childcare centers partnerships must pass at least 85% of the state funding they receive for pre-K students on to the private provider.
Morton said some providers previously received as little as half of the funding.
The law also directs the Texas Education Agency to designate at least four organizations to help districts and childcare centers establish and expand partnerships. Their responsibilities include recruiting high-quality childcare providers, matching them with school systems and helping the two sides work through contracts, finances and operations.
The state is also putting new restrictions on some future school-district pre-K expansions.
Beginning with programs planned for the 2027-28 school year, before a district creates a classroom for pre-K, it must first get permission from the intermediary to ensure that there is not already a seat available at a qualified community childcare center.
The law also puts restrictions on tuition-based district pre-K programs when qualified private providers are available.
Dallas ISD wants partners to succeed
Dallas ISD created partnership model in 2008, years before the state started pushing the plan.
Assistant Superintendent Ramos said the district works closely with its private partners to advertise their programs, recruit families and fill available seats.
She said that the enrollment changes that its partners – like Good Street - are seeing reflect a larger demographic change.
"We are seeing a decline in birth rates," Ramos said. "That as a district is trickling down to everybody."
The district itself, like many in North Texas, has been dealing with declining enrollment.
For Murriel Webb, the director of Braswell Child Care near Fair Park, the debate is about more than enrollment numbers.
"I want to be like a little kid saying, 'we were here first with early childhood education,'" Webb said.
Like Good Street, Braswell has been caring for South Dallas children long before families in the neighborhood had many other early education options, Webb said.
She just wants to make sure they are not forgotten as Texas public schools grow their early education programs.
"It is killing childcare facilities," she said. "There are a great number of childcare facilities that are having to close."
Sujata Dand is KERA's early childhood education reporter. Got a tip? Email her at sdand@kera.org.
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