photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The Lawrence Community Nursery School, 645 Alabama St., is pictured Friday, Oct. 24, 2025.

Things look cheery from the outside at the little red schoolhouse at 645 Alabama St. — now with a colorful street mural in front of it — but for a while now, the finances of the Lawrence Community Nursery School haven’t been as sunny.

The co-op preschool, which was founded in 1948, has seen a number of hurdles in recent years, including fewer families enrolling and a greater need for scholarships among those who do enroll. And, while it’s not in immediate danger of closing, the challenges have piled up, said Stephanie Duncan, the director and lead teacher at the school.

“It’s kind of been one thing after the other,” Duncan told the Journal-World on Friday.

Right now, Duncan said, the school is operating on a month-to-month basis because its afternoon program for 4- to 6-year-olds is underenrolled. But many of the problems, she said, go further back than just this year, and the COVID-19 pandemic had a lot to do with them.

“Before COVID, we had a wait list for years out,” Duncan said. “… We had a wait list that went on for years.”

But now, not only are fewer families enrolled, but families are also relying on the school’s scholarships a lot more. Duncan said the school has always made scholarships a priority to ensure that families can afford the tuition, but in the past, “most people needed 10%, 20%, 30% off.” Now, she said, “our families are almost at the poverty level, so they’re asking for a 40% scholarship.”

And, on top of all this, Duncan said, “our insurance cost for the school has doubled, so that’s a significant burden for us as well.”

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The Lawrence Community Nursery School, 645 Alabama St., is pictured Friday, Oct. 24, 2025.

Duncan said that there’s not much help available from grants, either. Many grants can only be used for certain things, she said — for instance, the school recently got a grant for a new roof — but it’s not as easy to find grants that can help with its general operations.

The nonprofit’s board might provide some help in that regard in the future, though. Duncan said that the school was going to try to “reconfigure” its board to get someone with more accounting knowledge or grant-writing expertise.

While the financial difficulties are real, Duncan believes the school is not in danger of closing right now. She said the shortfall it’s facing is about $1,000 or $2,000 a month, which is an amount that can be bridged with donations and fundraisers.

“The shortfall is not large enough to make us go there mentally,” Duncan said about the idea of the school closing. She also said that the families with kids in the program are aware of the situation.

“We’re transparent with our families, and they know where we are,” Duncan said.

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Nonprofit finance data compiled by ProPublica does show the COVID years as a sort of turning point for the school’s finances. The site has 990-EZ filings for the nursery school that date back to 2001. In no year prior to fiscal year 2021 did grants, gifts and contributions make up more than 25% of the school’s revenue, and in some years they made up much less — for instance, 2016, when they made up 1.6% of revenue.

In every year since 2021, however, grants, gifts and contributions have made up more than a quarter of the revenue that the Lawrence Community Nursery School reported. For fiscal year 2024, the latest year that data was available, the nursery school reported $60,519 in contributions, which made up 41.6% of its revenue. (It reported $145,590 in total revenue that year and $162,017 in expenses.)

The community has been contributing to the school financially in multiple ways, Duncan said. Occasionally the help comes from other community organizations — for instance, in 2024, the school was a beneficiary of the Lawrence St. Patrick’s Day Parade — but she said most of the fundraising events have been organized by the school’s families.

“They’re putting this together,” she said. “That’s how amazing our families are.”

Some of the events the school community organizes are annual, like the school’s Rockin’ Red Music Fest, but there are also some one-offs, like events at restaurants where a percentage of food sales gets donated to the school. Just last week, there was a fundraiser at Jason’s Deli, and another one is scheduled for 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, at the Chipotle location on 23rd Street.

Looking ahead, Duncan said the school community plans to have a block party next month to celebrate its new street mural. As the Journal-World reported, the mural was a collaboration between artist Dave Loewenstein, the neighborhood and the nursery school students, and it was painted last month during a special painting party at the intersection beside the school. Duncan said the party would involve a bake sale, a raffle and jewelry vendors.

“We’re looking forward to that in a huge way,” she said.

To keep updated with these and other fundraisers as the school organizes them, you can check its Facebook page, facebook.com/lcns.coop, and Duncan said that people can also give at any time through Givebutter. That link is at givebutter.com/lcns.

Duncan said that she thought things would be looking up for the rest of the year — both because of the fundraising efforts and because the school signed up a couple of new families recently. The school’s families, she reiterated, deserve the credit for keeping the doors open and allowing the school to pay its teachers a living wage.

“But we’re not quite where we need to be,” she said.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The Lawrence Community Nursery School’s logo is part of the street mural outside the school.