$10-a-day child care advocates pushing for daycare in Kamloops schools

Parents say it would be a big relief having their children in the same buildings as their home schools.

“I would love for her to be safe at school and I know that she won’t have to go anywhere else and for her daycare to be integrated at the school,” said one parent.

Another parent added, “A friend of mind, I have to go pick up her daughter after school sometimes just because there’s no daycare in the school that she goes to, so I think it’s a really good idea.”

The concept of integrating day cares into public schools is starting to gain some momentum as a way to utilize all the resources available.

One of the aspects of the $10-a-day plan is that child care would move out of the Ministry of Children and Family Development and into the Ministry of Education.

“Across most of Canada, child care sits with the Ministry of Education,” said Gregson. “We know it’s going to happen here. It’s just a matter of when.”

Ten dollar a day advocates like Gregson are trying to prepare cities and school districts for what is to come.

School District 73 Board Chair Kathleen Karpuk declined to speak to CFJC Today about the prospect of daycares in schools, wanting to talk to her fellow board members first.

However, school trustee John O’Fee says he’s on board with putting daycare centres into school facilities.

“These things exist now,” he said. “If it’s the provincial government’s plan to ultimately have daycare facilities as part of new school construction, then that’s something trustees and school boards are going to have to deal with. Speaking for myself, I don’t have a conceptual issue with that. Integrating day cares in elementary schools, then there could be after-school care as well. That makes logical sense to me.”

O’Fee says people need to see schools more as community centres that have a purpose beyond time spent in the classroom.

“We see groups using them in the evenings. We see multi-use facilities being built with schools in conjunction with cities,” noted O’Fee. “The City of Kamloops has paid for community facilities within Juniper Ridge Elementary School, for example, and so looking at schools as a community centre, looking how we can provide the service to the taxpayers, certainly speaking for myself, I don’t have any issue.”

The concept may be years down the road. School District 73 just received its first capital funding project in years to expand Valleyview Secondary. But advocates like Gregson are going to try to speed up the process.

“There’s $1 million per project available right now for school districts to build childcare programs in schools or on school grounds,” said Gregson, who will be back in Kamloops in October to address the school board. “And we’re hoping that School District 73 will access some of those capital funds.”

by Chad Klassen

$10-a-day child care advocates pushing for daycare in Kamloops schools

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