Photo courtesy of Yellow Springs Community Children's Center
Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center celebrates a century
- Published: September 17, 2026
MEET YOUR NONPROFITS | This is the sixth in a series profiling the ongoing work of Yellow Springs-based nonprofit organizations.
By Alissa Paolella
In the fall of 1926, eight children walked through the door of a private home on Elm Street. They entered a nursery school founded, from the start, to serve a socially and economically diverse population, open to families beyond the village’s most privileged circles. It was one of only two such schools in Ohio at the time, and 18th in the nation, according to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. A century later, that same idea is about to turn 100.
The school that opened as the Elm Street School, at 324 Elm St., according to a history provided by the center, is known today as the Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center. It has rarely closed its doors since — aside from two pandemic-related closures, in 2020 and 2021, that this newspaper reported on at the time — and now serves about 80 children from 56 families, center staff said, as it marks its 100th year this fall.
Local lore holds that a Black woman started the school, though Board President Debbie Downey said in an interview that the center has never been able to confirm that, despite working with archivists at Antioch College. Arthur and Lucy Morgan, who founded Antioch College’s laboratory school — The Antioch School — in 1921, had already started a program for the children of college staff, Downey said, but the village needed something of its own — which is where “community” entered the name.
Photo courtesy of Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center
The school moved twice before landing at its current home. In 1943, it became the Community Day Care Nursery and relocated to the King Building downtown, expanding its hours during World War II to support mothers working in defense industries and those filling jobs vacated by servicemen. It was officially incorporated in 1946, a date confirmed by both the Community Foundation and this newspaper’s own archives. In 1954, the center moved into the brick building at 320 Corry St. that still houses it today, made possible by a gift from Sergius Vernet and the Vernay Foundation, according to the center’s history and a 2010 Yellow Springs News report on the foundation’s dissolution. An addition overlooking Corry Street and Glen Helen followed in 1983.
The center reaches its centennial under new leadership. When Kristin Henshaw was hired as executive director in June — around the same time Erica Thomas came on board as business manager — she stepped into a job the board itself had been filling by committee.
“What stood out to me is the amount of work that the board put in during the transition,” she said.
Photo courtesy of Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center
Board President Debbie Downey said the arrangement was a necessity, not a preference, and the board plans to step back into a purely advisory role in January, once the centennial and a major renovation are behind them.
Henshaw’s path here wasn’t a straight line. She worked in higher education, teaching anthropology and researching maternal-fetal medicine, before pivoting into school-age childcare at the YMCA of Greater Dayton, she said. Thomas, meanwhile, came by way of the Village of Yellow Springs and the YMCA, and now keeps the center’s books, billing and compliance in order, according to Henshaw.
What sold Henshaw on the job, she said, was its size.
“It’s small,” she said — a deliberate contrast with the larger, more corporate programs she’d worked in, where families rarely got the chance to truly be known. Here, she said, that part has come almost immediately, and it’s been the best part of the job.
That intimacy shapes how the center teaches, too. Downey described a curriculum that leans hard into play over screens, including a nonviolent conflict-resolution program the center built this year with mental health specialists for its summer camp, Camp Cool Beans. Even the subject matter bends to the kids, according to Henshaw: this month’s centerwide theme is space, and the toddlers and the oldest students are exploring wildly different corners of it.
Photo courtesy of Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center
Then there’s Glen Helen. Henshaw said staff walk children to the nature preserve regularly — not as a field trip, but as a habit — giving kids access to more than 1,000 acres most wouldn’t otherwise see on an ordinary weekday.
“The things that you see and experience when you’re outside are very different,” she said.
All of that seems to be paying off. Enrollment has climbed to about 80 children from 56 families, up from roughly 60–65 students when Downey joined the board in fall 2023, she said — a rebound echoed in the center’s own history: a March 2020 Yellow Springs News article put enrollment at 84 just before the pandemic hit. Henshaw’s goal for the coming year is 90–92 children, still shy of the building’s capacity of 101, which staff keep intentionally out of reach, so kids have room to move up as they outgrow their classrooms, she said. Families drive in from well beyond the village — Fairborn, Xenia, Springfield, Urbana and Enon — Downey said, and about a quarter rely on Title 20 state assistance to help cover costs that, staff say, still run under market rate.
Not every corner of the center is growing. Demand for infant care has thinned out so much that when staff recently worked through the waiting list, nobody needed the open spot, Downey said. The center may eventually turn that room into toddler or preschool space instead — the classrooms where the waiting lists are long these days, she said.
The center’s balance sheet has kept pace with its growth, according to Downey. It closed last fiscal year in the black. A 2025 bequest helped seed a new endowment at the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, and a separate gift established a Teacher-Staff Development Fund to help staff pursue Child Development Associate certification — both gifts, she said, from donors who asked to stay anonymous. There’s still work to do: staff are fundraising for a drainage project to fix chronic flooding behind the building, flooding that has, at times, crept into a classroom. As of this summer, they’d raised $30,000 of the $44,000 needed, Downey said.
The center’s roots reach well past its own walls, Downey and Henshaw said. This fall marks its third joint Halloween party with the Yellow Springs Senior Center, and staff are working to deepen ties with Yellow Springs Library’s children’s programming. There’s early talk of a Disney movie weekend with Little Art Theatre — staff like to point out that the center predates Disney itself — and the Optimist Club of Greene County has helped fund transportation for summer camp field trips, according to Downey.
Photo courtesy of Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center
Downey is part of a board of eight, according to a roster provided by the center: three current parents, Sachi Dixon, Matan Mazursky and Brittany Keller, alongside Michelle Giguere, Franklin Halley, Judy Dixon and Eileen Tener. Mazursky serves as treasurer, Giguere as vice president and Judy Dixon as secretary. It’s a board with deep roots of its own — several members, including Downey, sent their own children through the center, and one member’s mother served on the board before her, Downey said. That multigenerational thread is exactly what the center is leaning into for its centennial film, a 10- to 12-minute documentary made with a Wright State University film student, expected to be finished soon with clips posted to the center’s website and Facebook page.
The celebration itself unfolds in three parts this fall, according to a schedule provided by the center. On Friday, Sept. 18, an open house with dinner, the annual meeting and a Children’s Festival kicks things off at 5 p.m. at the center, free and open to anyone in the community. On Oct. 17, “A Magical Night of Giving, for a Century of Wonder” brings magician David Williamson — of Broadway’s “The Illusionists” and Cirque du Soleil’s “Circus 1903” — to the Foundry Theater for a show and silent auction, with free childcare and a magic-themed party back at the center for younger siblings. And on Nov. 14, “YSCCC Gets Nostalgic” at John Bryan Community Center will turn toward memory itself: a brief anniversary ceremony, a time capsule, local trivia, music and dancing.
For Downey, though, the milestone comes down to something simpler than any one event.
“I view it as a sacred trust,” she said. “I’m thrilled that we’re still here. I’m thrilled that we contribute to the economy, and that we contribute to the well-being of families and children, most importantly.”
*Alissa Paolella is a freelance reporter for the News.
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