A local daycare center director and founder is looking back on 25 years of providing enriching child care to kids in the Youngstown area and getting ready to open a second location.
In 2000, Tracy Jordan started babysitting from her home as a side gig that has since become a growing childcare business in the Mahoning Valley.
“My house was always full of kids,” she said. “I was a single mom of two young daughters, and before I started working in childcare, I was in retail for seven years. I decided to switch gears and go into child care - it just came naturally.”
Jordan said she connected with neighborhood parents who worked day shifts and needed someone qualified to watch their kids.
Many of her neighbors and local parents signed up for Jordan’s daycare and she soon needed to find a larger location to accommodate her daycare center.
Creating Happy Campers Learning Center
Happy Campers Learning Center accepts infants starting at eight weeks old. Tracy Jordan
Jordan said once she recognized there was such a need in her community and neighborhood for quality child care, she started to set up a commercial daycare center.
“I started with a home center in 2000 at my house and outgrew that very quickly,” she said. “I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to be in a position to be a servant to my community and to our children.”
The Happy Campers Learning Center first found a home at Bethlehem Lutheran Church on East Midlothian Avenue on the south side of Youngstown in 2008.
“We had an amazing partnership with the church community and the neighborhood community; it just all came together as one,” Jordan said. “Our first location was right across from WKBN News. We sometimes used to do tours there - we’re really big on community.”
Jordan said the daycare’s mission statement is ‘We work with families to build better communities.’
In 2011, Jordan had the chance to buy her own building for Happy Campers Learning Center. She said the business had outgrown the space in Bethlehem Lutheran Church, which again shows how much of a need there is for quality child care in the community.
“We had a waiting list for a while. We were able to acquire the building that we currently are in at 518 East Indianola. Our building has a capacity of 71 children, and we’re almost always at full capacity,” Jordan said. “We serve infants up to 12 years old, starting at eight weeks old. We welcome children of parents and families that are middle-to-low income and have to work or go to school.”
Jordan said Happy Campers Learning Center is a 5-star, gold-star-rated program.
“It was very important for me to be gold star-rated in Ohio,” Jordan said. “It’s a step above regular licensing rules and we actually prepare our children for kindergarten.”
She explained that the children have a curriculum, and there are things the center requires the kids and the parents to do to make sure they’re developing, mentally, physically, cognitively, right on step and on time. Jordan said this allows them to be productive and successful when they enter the elementary school programs.
Jordan went on to say children enrolled in Happy Campers Learning Center enjoy going on group field trips and being exposed to positive learning environments.
Happy Campers Learning Center Tracy Jordan
“We try to get them out, get them involved, expose them to things because you don’t know who the next generation’s doctors or lawyers are,” she said. “We go to the farms and grocery stores to see how that works. We can do virtual field trips now, which is really cool, because they get to go to Switzerland from their chairs. If all they hear is video games, rap music, cussing, that’s all they’ll know.”
“But if you get in a program, we don’t know who the next Picasso is until he’s been to a museum and seen art,” Jordan added. “We don’t know who the next jazz aficionado is if they’ve never been to a concert or the next scientist if we’ve never taken them to a planetarium or library.”
New jobs, reaching more families with second learning center
To welcome 2025 and meet the childcare needs of more Mahoning and Trumbull County families, Jordan is opening a second Happy Campers Learning Center inside Word and Music Ministry. `
“The new center came about totally by accident,” she said. “We’re always looking to expand, grow and help our communities, and there was a need on the north side of town in the Liberty Township area. I had actually begun looking for second locations at the same time as Word & Music Ministry’s pastor Duane Turnage.”
Jordan said Turnage is the senior pastor there and had been asking around at the same time she had been asking around. She said the two were connected by mutual friends.
“They were looking for a center to occupy some space that they had in their church that was formerly a school, and we were looking, and it just clicked,” she said.
According to Jordan, the Happy Campers North Learning Center will create six new jobs.
“It’s a boost to our local economy as well,” she said. “We’re not just taking anybody. You have to go through a training program, follow quality rules, and be on top of the regular licensing rules. You have to have a heart for children. It takes a special person nowadays to work with these kids and families as well.”
Jordan said she is still doing interviews and narrowing it down to the first six people that’ll have a great opportunity to make a difference in some little people’s lives.
On Feb. 5, Jordan is hosting a grand opening at the North Happy Campers Learning Center at 1451 Churchill-Hubbard Road in Liberty Township.
Students at Happy Campers Learning Center in Youngstown on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Tracy Jordan
“There are several elementary schools in the area and families there with young children, and they don’t have access to highly-rated child care,” Jordan said. “We’re excited about being able to offer this for that area of our community and expand our services to the people that we need to help the most - our children.”
The Happy Campers Learning Center is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday at 518 E Indianola Ave. in Youngstown.
