Children play in the courtyard during recess at a local Ottawa school. Local daycares are losing enrolment to kindergartens.
A dimly lit room is filled with artwork — paper plates painted blue and green with yellow crepe paper carefully glued in bunches and large life-size cut-outs with children’s faces painted by small hands dot the walls.
Construction paper flowers with yellow tops and a googly-eyed caterpillar are pasted on the windows. The before and after kindergarten room at Centennial Public School is quiet at 10 a.m.
However, within a few hours, it will be full of four and five-year-olds, just finished their kindergarten classes.
Until recently, the program operated by Centretown Parent’s Daycare was slated for closure by the next school year.
After 29 years of operation, Centennial Public School was set to institute full day kindergarten in 2011 and close the before and after school childcare program as a result.
Recently the program in Centennial Public school was taken off the closure list, but Janette Fredette, an early childhood educator at the centre,was not reassured.
"Eventually, of course, it will happen," she says.
“It’s a real uncertain time for early childhood educators and community based child care operators. Everybody’s in a wait see situation,” says Shellie Bird, the union education officer for the union that represents Centretown Parents’ Daycare and 11 other centres in Ottawa.
“We’re not sure if we’ll see some centres close because they can’t afford the cost to relocate or because subsidies are leaving the programs without sufficient funding,” she says.
When the public school board takes over the 18 spaces available in the program, it will have a huge financial impact on Centretown Parent’s Daycare, which also operates a school-age and a toddler program in Centretown, Fredette says.
“We’ve been under pressure for a number of years to become more cost-effective, " Frechette says.
Kindergarten programs are the least expensive to run. They supplement the more expensive (toddler and infant) programs. It helps with the shortfalls in the other programs,” she observes.
Fredette says she’s concerned about the financial viability of the centre if they lose the important kindergarten spaces.
Fredette is also worried about what this will mean for Centretown parents who rely on the extended hours Centretown Daycare offers (the program runs from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays). Schools aren’t required to run before and after school programs, and the group that will be most affected is low-income families, Fredette says.
Sixteen of the 18 spaces at the before and after program are filled by families who rely on subsidies from the City of Ottawa to help pay for the cost of childcare.
“If we were to have closed this year, our preschool families and every other family that’s in here that’s subsidized would not have been able to have before-and-after care that is not subsidized,” Fredette says.
“They would’ve had to look for a cheaper form of care,” Fredette adds.
Subsidy dollars are also important to the centre’s budget.
“There is huge concern that our parents will take their subsidy money with them to the school board. We’re already underfunded. We’re already in crisis,” Fredette says.
Bird says the worries and uncertainty stem from a lack of communication between the provincial and federal governments to help families and childcare programs with the adjustment to full day kindergarten.
“It’s a huge time of uncertainty. The province did not communicate this program well, and it has left everybody scrambling,” said Bird.