Amarillo’s population surge during the 1920s has meant recent centennial milestones for a number of enduring local businesses and nonprofits. One of those organizations is Children’s Learning Centers, which first opened 100 years ago as Amarillo Day Nurseries on April 1, 1925.
Eventually, it was renamed the Will Rogers Day Nursery, then the McLellan Day Nursery—after Bertha McLellan, who led the organization for 35 years. “She was the head teacher. She was the head cook. She was the bill-payer, all those things,” says Steve Burton, who directs the organization today.
By the mid-1980s, it had become Children’s Learning Centers and has today expanded into a licensed and certified child development organization serving hundreds of kids—from infants to pre-K—across seven different Amarillo locations. Children’s Learning Centers provides low-cost childcare and financial assistance for families who qualify, thanks to support from the United Way of Amarillo & Canyon, which celebrated its own 100th anniversary in 2024.
“We were original partners with them, one of the few at the very beginning,” Burton says. “[Through] United Way, we receive funding to subsidize some parents that don’t necessarily qualify for other types of funding.”
As with so many other industries, the past few years have been a challenge in the childcare sector. During the pandemic, Children’s Learning Centers found itself serving many essential worker families. Burton and his teachers endeavored to find a way to care for those children as safely as possible. “You’ve still got to do something with your kids,” he says, looking back. “It was important for me to lead an organization that had been through World War II, the Great Depression, stock market crashes, Korea, Vietnam. All those pivotal times in the country’s history.”
Children’s Learning Centers was able to retain its teachers, but has faced post-pandemic challenges staying ahead of staffing trends. “We’ve increased our starting pay,” Burton says, acknowledging that it takes a special combination of patience and skill to teach a developmental curriculum to a diverse group of preschool-age children.
Kids are different today, too, thanks to technology. Structuring the organization’s play-based curriculum around each child’s unique interests and learning styles can be an obstacle in today’s digital world, where kids have access to smartphones or iPads at home. “The main difference that we see is the dependence on technology, [families] using those to occupy their minds,” Burton says.
Despite this reliance on technology, kids still benefit from low-tech socialization with other children in order to develop speech, problem-solving skills and more. Children’s Learning Centers has been providing that since Bertha McLellan was managing a single classroom. To learn more, visit childrenslc.org.
