Betty Stephenson and the
Presbyterian Children’s Center Board
The Presbyterian Children’s Center closed Sept. 28. Its brief history and legacy it has left in the community started in the early 1980s at the Presbyterian Church when it was on the corner of Bush Street and South Fourth Avenue.
It started as a daycare program to accommodate young mothers in the congregation with infants and children too young to atttend public schools who were beginning to work as a second wage-earner in the family.
Seeing the need, the pastor and congregation started the program since the church had sufficient and appropriate space to provide a safe and Christian daycare for the children.
When the current church was built, it was designed to accommodate a daycare center. The daycare was built within the church itself and the preschool children were cared for in a separate building on the corner of Southern Street. It became a mission of the church not only for children of church families but also a service to the community.
To accommodate the children, the center provided transportation to and from schools in the district fore before and after school care. The center was open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to meet the needs of working parents.
However, as all things change, so has the life of the PCC. Various factors have been instrumental in this decision. The city has grown over the years and, with it, new additional sources of daycare. This has provided a benefit to families but also brought challenges, ranging from the school district’s expansion of the preschool and kindergarten programs, the opening of other centers, to increased small, at-home daycares.
Smaller paychecks from the recent economy have also given rise to moms’ co-ops that share in the care of several children on a rotating basis. All of these factors had an impact on the PCC in one form or another, but the bottom line, despite the efforts of the director and staff, and the loss of students in the center was cause for the PCC board to close the center at this time.
While this is the end of the PCC in this form, the center’s facility remains intact within the church. The PCC board and congregation have faith that perhaps an opportunity in the future to revisit it in some manner — or to use the foundation it leaves behind as the center has done for about 30 years, a need that will be a benefit to the church and community — will open the doors once again as a mission of the church.