CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Westside Corpus Christi childhood center that served families for about 15 years has closed its doors, and three more centers in the area face the same fate.
The Margarite Street location was part of Neighborhood Centers of Corpus Christi. CEO Cesar Flores says the closure comes down to lost funding from both the federal and state government.
"How did we get here? We got here by the fact that we've lost a lot of funding that was provided to us by both the federal and the state government," Flores said.
Flores warns the closures are creating a gap in affordable childcare access for Westside families.
"The west side of Corpus is slowly becoming an early learning center desert where you're not gonna have affordable childcare," Flores said.
He says the burden now falls on families to find alternatives.
"They have no affordable childcare, and that's a huge impact on the families that really need to get to work," Flores said.
Roxanne Broadway, a mother of two children under 2, knows that struggle firsthand. Her son, Raiden, was born six weeks premature, making trusted, affordable childcare even more critical for her family.
"In the beginning it was really hard to establish working and making sure that my kids are being taken care of," Broadway said.
Broadway also works at a Neighborhood Centers location, which gives her a discount on childcare. Without it, she says the cost would be overwhelming.
"It would just become nearly impossible. It would be paycheck to paycheck, borrowing when we don't want to borrow, and it would be extremely hard for, I think, any mother in that kind of situation," Broadway said.
She says families already struggling to make ends meet have even fewer affordable options available to them.
"What am I gonna do? We need more income, we need someone to watch the kids," Broadway said.
Flores says the families who still need these services are what worry him most. He hopes to raise money at a centennial celebration and fundraiser planned for November, marking 100 years of Neighborhood Centers serving Corpus Christi families.
Three Neighborhood Centers locations remain open — all on the Westside — but Flores says those centers are also at risk of closing.
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