‘Our hearts are broken’: Abilene’s Pioneer Pathways Learning Center prepares to say goodbye

ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) — An Abilene daycare that has served the community for decades has announced its closure. Pioneer Pathways Learning Center recently sent a letter to parents informing them about the decision to close. Pioneer Drive Baptist Church Deacon Sparky Dean explained that the decision was hard to make.

“This has been an ongoing discussion for years. Each year, we look at all of our programs and evaluate them to see how they’re doing. This is a decision that is very hard. Several committees were involved with this, including a lot of people, and we just decided that the market here in Abilene is not sustainable with the number of daycares that we have and the limited number of kids that we have,” explained Dean.

Dean said the reason for the closure can be attributed to the decline in enrollment. He added that after the COVID-19 pandemic, he had noticed a decline in students. He was heartbroken to see the childcare facility, which has been around since the 1970s, start to prepare for closure on August 15, 2025.

“Prices have gone out here are terribly high, and we just can’t keep passing that on to the parents and the kiddos. The church has started supplementing the daycare. Every year, there is a budget. We add more to it and add to it. Like right now, we’re about half a little over halfway through the year, $123,000 over budget just in this one area. That’s one of many concerns that we have,” explained Dean.

This closure impacts roughly 100 students, 85 families, and 25 staff members. Dean added that the church is working to ensure everyone is cared for before closing its doors later this year.

“Our hearts are broken that we’re having to do this. But we tried to make it easy with our cutoff date of August 15th. Not today, not tomorrow, not this week, to give the parents a chance to find something else. We as a church are looking at options for them and for their kids and for our staff that we love,” added Dean.

Parents in Abilene have expressed concerns about the high costs of childcare and the lengthy waitlists. The recent closure announcements have reinforced their decision to be stay-at-home parents rather than relying on traditional childcare options.

“It’s hard to hear. I think especially whenever you’re a mom who works and you don’t have the option to be a stay-at-home mom, I think it puts them in a really hard position. I think when they’re looking around, Abilene already doesn’t have very many options. So when two of them get closed down, I just don’t know what they’re going to do,” shared Abilene mom Ashlyn Wise.

“We kind of figure that it’s less expensive just to stay home with the kids anyway because you get a part-time job or a full-time second job, and you just use that check just to pay for daycare,” added Abilene Mom Sonya Sisneros.

With daycare being a staple for many in Abilene, Dean adds that for some families, this is a daycare they were a part of as kids and a daycare they used for their own kids.

“If you ask anybody in Abilene, they loved Beverly Allen; she was our main person. My grandkids went through here at Pioneer Drive. We have kids and grandkids, and we have parents who grew up on Pioneer Drive and were part of the daycare. Everybody knows Miss Bell, and so we look at this as a whole, and it affects a lot of people, but a lot of prayer and a lot of tears have gone into making this decision,” explained Dean.

While the full-time daycare center will be closing, Dean shared that the Children’s Day Out Program will continue and be unimpacted.