Parents and children in Elmira could soon be without a local public child care centre if Regional council decides to follow recommendations made by an outside consulting firm.
The Region of Waterloo is trying to save a few million dollars, and KPMG has suggested closing all five publicly-funded child care centres run by the municipality, including the Elmira Children’s Centre on Mockingbird Drive.
At a public meeting in Regional council chambers on Sept. 30, parents from all over the area were very vocal about their objections to the potential closure.
Julie Forth has two children who have been enrolled at the Elmira centre for the past two years and says if the centre were to close, it would be a big loss for the residents of Woolwich.
“I can’t say enough wonderful things about our experience there and the excellent program they offer for young kids,” she said in an email to the Observer. “If this centre were to close, I really believe that this would be a great loss to the community. The Region currently provides a child care program that is high quality. There is a demand for child care spaces already, and Elmira is a growing community.”
Jan Richard, president of CUPE Local 1886, the union that represents the 10 fulltime child care workers at the centre, says if the operation shuts its doors, Woolwich Township will be without a valuable resource for both parents and their children.
“[The staff] are highly trained,” she said, adding that the Elmira Children’s Centre is one of only 10 centres across the country currently providing the HighScope program for the kids. “Parents get regular report cards, there are parent-teacher meetings … it really helps children transition into regular school as well.”
The HighScope program is based around a curriculum covering active learning, a daily routine, adult-child interactions, conflict resolution and tracks key developmental milestones in the students, among other categories. Follow-up studies have shown graduates to have lower rates of teen pregnancy, higher rates of high school graduation, are less likely to spend time in prison and have a higher monthly income than those who weren’t a part of HighScope in their childhood.
Richard addressed regional council last week, and says she didn’t hear one person speak in favour of the recommendation to close the Elmira Children’s Centre and four others in the region.
“I don’t think there was anybody there supporting it,” she said. “A lot of the parents spoke to council on Wednesday evening and these were parents where even if their children had graduated, they still talked about the teachers and how they still love them. (Closing the centres) would be a real loss, for the children especially.”
Sean Strickland was one of the councillors who pushed for the KPMG review and says the region needs to look at all the options in front of them to get the most bang for its buck.
“I guess what I have to weigh in mind is that these are 250 spots in a child care system that has 10,000 children in it and so, as an elected official, I have to weigh the responsibility and deliver a program for all 10,000 children in the region and not necessarily just focus on the 250,” he said. “That is what I am wrestling with.”
He wants to reassure parents that no final decision has been made, but if the Region were to close the centres, there would be alternative options available for parents and their children.
“If we decide to close the five directly operated child care centres, it would take place over a period of time, anywhere from two to five years,” he said. “It won’t be all at once. It would allow us time, over that five year period, to build the capacity of the existing system to absorb the 250 spots that would have been previously provided by the region. And then part of the KPMG recommendation is that over and above that 250 that would be repositioned within the community, there would be an additional 200 subsidized spots made available for low income families. There would be a net gain of 200 subsidized spots.”
With one child in the Elmira centre, and another registered to start in December, Marlene Jantzi says she has looked at those alternative options and couldn’t find a private daycare that gives her family the support and confidence they need.
“The home daycare setting didn’t work out the best for us, and I ended up driving (my daughter) to Wellington County and she would be in the car with me for an hour a day and it was okay, but what happened was, sometimes I would drop her off and it would be all new staff,” said Jantzi, adding that the private centre also didn’t have the resources to accommodate her daughter’s dietary restrictions. “I ended up having to pack her lunches every day.”
She has found, however, everything she was looking for at The Elmira Children’s Centre.
“The difference between the private centre … to the Elmira one, is just that my three-year-old has completely blossomed,” she said. “The staff, they have been there forever, they love their jobs, they are highly trained with all these qualifications. I think for the first time, for my husband and I, it felt sort of like family. It is an extension. We can drop her off there and have no more guilty feelings. It has been good for her. She asks to go.”
Regional councillors will be reviewing the KPMG recommendations at great length at their next regular council meeting on Oct. 21 and may even make a final decision on the closures.
“We could ask for more information, we could agree with KPMG and vote to close the five centres over the next three to five years and transition our responsibilities, or we could take no action,” said Strickland.
