Growing to Meet the Childcare Needs of Their Community
By Courtney Balestier, Contributing Writer
September 30, 2025
Thirteen years ago, Kenya and Sean Johnson opened The Learning Ladder — an early childcare center in Erie, Pennsylvania — with the help of a Bridgeway loan. In the years since, Kenya and Sean have watched tiny toddlers become young adults and have built lasting relationships with local families. They’ve also seen just how desperately their community needs high-quality childcare.
“We have 105 children on the waiting list,” Kenya said. The city’s waitlist surpasses 1,000. Further, 99 percent of The Learning Ladder families receive subsidies. “We know there’s that need in our community. We’re in a childcare desert.” In this landscape, The Learning Ladder is an oasis: a Keystone STAR 4 childcare facility, the highest ranking possible, offering care for infants to school-age children.
“I wouldn’t want anything less than STAR 4,” Kenya said. “That’s what we’re always striving for, to be the best.”
But with such high demand for childcare in Erie, The Learning Ladder had outgrown its current location. The space constraint limited their ability both to take on more children and to pay their staff the wages they deserved. Eager to expand, the Johnsons jumped at the chance to purchase a spacious building in a central downtown location, through their other business, Johnson Real Estate. But the long-vacant property needed much more work than anticipated.
“We had a nice shell to start with, but once we started digging in, we saw that the infrastructure was in dire straits,” Sean said. That included an elevator that needed to be brought up to code. So the couple returned to Bridgeway, closing two loans in July to refinance the property and complete renovations. They also participated in the Pennsylvania State Small Business Credit Initiative, which helped with closing costs.
Now, The Learning Ladder is well-positioned to be able to triple its enrollment, providing more good-paying jobs and more high-quality childcare. Johnson Real Estate also has plans to create 18 apartments in the building. Kenya plans to call the new location The Learning Ladder Academy, and the couple hopes its location and after-school care can also attract professionals working in downtown Erie.
During renovations, The Learning Ladder will continue to operate out of its existing location. It also recently acquired another local childcare business, doubling the number of children they’re able to care for before the new, larger space opens. These steps are further testaments to The Learning Ladder’s critical role in the community and the care with which Kenya and Sean approach their work. And Bridgeway has been there every step of the way.
“Bridgeway has been instrumental to our childcare space from the beginning,” Sean said. “We got denied before we went to Bridgeway. We were going to lose our space. When we met with Bridgeway, it just worked out; it was a good feeling.
“It’s an experience we’ve never had with banks. It feels more like a family vibe: being celebrated, not tolerated. Bridgeway invites us. We know what we have, we know we are a good client, and we are wanted.”
Learn More
Bridgeway Capital offers flexible loans and business assistance to help small businesses grow, provide quality jobs, and develop vibrant communities. We also offer flexible loans for real estate projects that create economic activity and attract investment in disinvested neighborhoods. Learn more about our small business and real estate lending opportunities.
About Courtney Balestier
Courtney Balestier is a writer whose work focuses on the intersection of place and identity, particularly in her native Appalachia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Joyland, The New Yorker online, Lucky Peach, the New York Times, Saveur, Oxford American, New York, Wired, and others. Her writing has been anthologized in The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell (Ohio University Press, 2019) Cornbread Nation 7: The Best of Southern Food Writing (UGA Press, 2014) and nominated for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award and a Pushcart Prize. She is also the creator and host of WMFA, a podcast about why and how we write.