By Chandra Price
A day-care centre based at McNabb Park School has refused to extend its operating hours in order to show support for striking teachers.
“I asked them to extend their hours but they said they need to support the teachers on strike,” says parent Mei Qing Tang.
“It’s hard for me . . . I work nights and I normally sleep during the day.” Qing Tang’s four-year-old daughter, Lena, is enrolled in the Centretown kindergarten day care program. Now, during the strike, she says she is finding it difficult to get her necessary sleep.
“We have chosen not to extend the hours of our kindergarten program,” says Pat Williams, co-ordinator of the day care.
“For political reasons we are not working the hours that teachers should be . . . we feel very strongly that we need to support teachers through this battle.”
The Centretown Parents Daycare program is usually open from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., and closed while the kids attend their regular kindergarten classes between 9 a.m. and noon.
Normally, following their kindergarten classes, the kids return to the day care from noon until 5:30 p.m.
Parents have to make other arrangements for the morning and bring their kids to the centre at noon.
Ginette Bedard, information counsellor for Child Care Information, says Centretown Parents Daycare is the only centre in Ottawa that has not extended its hours.
She says it is up to the centre to decide if they want to extend their hours.
While most parents did not agree with the day care’s decision to back the teachers instead of meeting their needs, they weren’t the only ones who want school to resume.
“I want to go back to school,” says Tommy Duong, 5, who is enrolled in Centretown Parents Daycare.
His mother, Hanh Duong, says it is very difficult for parents to work their schedules around the obscure hours the day care is open.
“I have to stay home in the morning and bring my son to day care at 11:45 a.m.,” says Duong. “It is very inconvenient.”
The centre’s decision is costing some parents more money to make other child care arrangements for the morning.
“It’s going to cost me a lot of money,” says Bev Goharian. “I pay $25 for a half-day at the other day care and $23 a day here.” Bedard says the additional hours of child care that parents require could be subsidized up to $40 a day, but that is still unclear.
Not only is Centretown Parents Daycare’s decision costing Goharian more money, it is forcing her to spend her lunch break bringing her son from one day-care centre to another.
Parent Kathy Steinhoff says she had to stay home with her son, Simon, 4, the morning of the first day of the strike.
She says he stayed with his grandmother the second morning, and will stay with his father in the morning for the rest of the week.
“We have a few parents who are not very supportive and feel very strongly that we should be extending our hours,” says Williams. “Our parents are finding it very difficult.”
Williams says if the strike continues, the centre will revisit the issue of extending hours at the next board meeting, Nov. 8.