A former church in Canton is set to be transformed into an early childhood center with the goal of increasing kindergarten readiness in a neighborhood that experiences a disproportionate amount of crime and poverty.
The former Canton Calvary Mission Church, across the street from Gibbs Elementary School on Gibbs Avenue, will soon be repurposed into Gibbs Avenue Center.
Canton For All People, a ministry of Crossroads United Methodist Church working to improve the lives of residents in Canton, wants to build back the Gibbs neighborhood with local partners. First step: educating its youngest residents.
More than 500 kids under the age of five live in the Gibbs neighborhood, according to a report by consultant group, Executive Insite.
“We are trying to be intentional about doing direct outreach with kids who never had any kind of early childhood education and be a feeder school for the public school system,” said Rev. Don Ackerman, senior pastor of Crossroads UMC and executive director of Canton For All People.
He said the nonprofit received the donated building from UMC.
Programming will include the All Kids Early Learning Center, a pre-school and day care for children from infancy through 5 years, and after school activities. The 26,000-square-foot building will have a place for seniors and a sanctuary for interfaith services.
It’s a $1.9 million project. Ackerman said that $1.8 million has been raised and renovation will begin this fall, with a tentative plan to open in fall of 2026.
Canton For All People has hopes that the YMCA of Central Stark County will develop and run the early childhood center.
If the partnership happens, about 70 kids will fill the slots, and about 25 staff members, including an administrator and community liaison for parents, will be hired, said Heidi Wilson, vice president of childcare and camping at the YMCA of Central Stark County.
A subsidy from the state will be offered to parents who enroll their child, she said.
“Depending on what percentage of poverty they live in, they would be assigned a copay,” she said. “Just speculating, but most of our families are kind of in a $0 copay range or up to like $30 a week.”.
Working together to help a community
Canton For All People formed in 2022 to address poor housing conditions and generational poverty for downtown residents. The nonprofit buys blighted homes, repairs them and sells them to eligible residents.
That same year, crime fell across all neighborhoods in Canton, according to Canton Police Chief John Gabbard. Contributing to the drop in crime, Gabbard said, is a concentration by his department on gang activity.
“The folks in our houses get first shot at the preschool,” Ackerman said. “So, someone in the Canton For All People house or Canton For All People apartment gets access to daycare and childcare.”
About 80 apartment units are going to be added to the neighborhood by Canton For All People in the next two years, Ackerman said, pointing out there could be more kids in need of early childhood education.
But any child living in the Gibbs neighborhood will have access to All Kids Early Learning Center, he said.
United Way of Greater Stark County, which helps fund the weekend meal bags distributed to Gibbs Elementary students from Canton For All People, has visited Gibbs and other elementary schools in the area since 2022 to hear about the needs of the students and families.
“We have heard through our partners and other community leaders for a long time [of] the issues that are happening related to lack of strength in early childhood education, kids coming to school not prepared for kindergarten [and] third grade reading is not at great levels,” said Adrianne Price, the vice president of community impact of United Way of Greater Stark County.
That need is what prompted Canton for All People to transform a church into an early childhood learning center.
The number of children in the Canton City School District who were ready to enter kindergarten during the 2023-2024 school year based on language and literacy scores was 22%. Those same scores for students at Gibbs Elementary School was 14%, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education.
Several factors can contribute to these low scores, said Laura Justice, executive director of Cranes Center for Early Learning Research at The Ohio State University.
Ohio has a fragmented early learning landscape. While some children attend preschool, many stay home with mom or dad, are cared for by a relative or go to daycare that don’t offer robust educational opportunities. Even in those settings, more could be done to help children thrive.
“Whatever the setting is, the issue isn’t that they’re not attending preschool, the issue is that they need opportunities to develop skills that help them be prepared for kindergarten,” she said.
Some of those opportunities include reading a picture book to a child and pausing to explain complicated vocabulary words.
Preparing children for kindergarten
Preschoolers enrolled through the Canton City School District go to the Early Learning Center at Schreiber, previously Schreiber Elementary School.
That changed in 2021 to funnel all resources to one building so kids and staff are better supported. Prior to that, children attended pre-k programs at one of the district’s elementary schools, said Jeff Talbert, superintendent of the Canton City School District.
Up to 350 kids can enroll through Schreiber. Talbert said about 300 have enrolled this year.
“We want to make sure that we can meet the needs of all our kids, but of course right now we can't,” he said. “We typically have about 500 students per class (in kindergarten and grade school).”
In addition to Schreiber, another preschool and childcare center in the Gibbs area is the JRC Learning Center.
The preschool can serve 38 youngsters in the Head Start program, which opened in early 2024, and about 40 more children in two other classrooms, said Julie Abiecunas, chief executive officer at JRC Learning Center.
“When we became a Head Start provider we did it because there was such a need in the community and almost immediately, we had all 30 something spots filled,” she said.
Ackerman said he’s hoping to fill all of the spots at All Kids Early Learning Center.
This “campus” will be for “kids between the ages of zero and third grade that’s got Gibbs Elementary at the heart of it and this Gibbs Avenue Center,” he said.
