Kamloops United Church preschool operations not returning after fire restoration work

Betty Karpuk is the chair of the preschool board and says she was disappointed to learn that the program wouldn’t be returning to the church building when fire restoration work is completed.

“My feeling is that the whole congregation should probably be in on the discussion of closing it,” she says, noting that a similar review of programming took place during a renovation period in 2013. “But the council circle has the right to make decisions. Do I have the right to complain about them? Yes. I’m doing it.”

Preschool director Patti Pernitsky has been an educator in the space for decades and says plans to close the preschool came as a shock.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had no idea,” Pernitsky told CFJC News. “Because as I say, I went in thinking, ‘Oh, good. We’re finally going to get moving on this (fire restoration).’ You know?”

Kamloops United Church and the user groups who rent or use space there have been operating out of other locations for several weeks now. A fire in August this year left a large section of the building damaged. There’s still no timeline for when the extensive and expensive repairs will be completed.

“There’s not a lot of facilities sitting around empty, so as far as starting up someplace else, I hadn’t really given that much thought because I had every indication that we were opening back up again,” Pernitsky said, when asked whether moving to another building is an option for the non-profit.

The church says it hasn’t finalized exactly what will be done with the space that the preschool occupied, but there is still a plan to have some form of child-related programming once the building is renovated and restored.

Speaking to CFJC, Rev. Michael Caveney says while the council opted to not bring back the preschool when the building fully reopens, their pre-existing plans to bring in a daycare operation haven’t changed.

“The board of the church made a decision not to reopen the Kamloops United Church preschool,” he explains. “Now, this does not mean we are leaving the area of children in the downtown core. We were already working on plans for a 40-child daycare and we’re still going ahead with that.”

Around 60 children were enrolled at the preschool and out-of-school care programs. Families had to find alternative spaces for the duration of the fire renovation period and Pernitsky says staff members had also been advised to find another job because they weren’t sure how long the repair work would take.

But some parents, including Tseren Radnaatseren, wanted to see their children return to the facility when it reopened. Radnaatsersen says her son attended the preschool when the family initially moved to Canada from Mongolia, and eventually used the out-of-school care when he became school-aged.

She’s hopeful the preschool can reopen as she’s planned to have any of her future children attend.

“You know, we are a minority, so it was one of the most important parts to learn that we can actually belong to this community,” she adds. “This centre gave us a chance to see that we actually can belong to this community.”

Karpuk notes that the preschool board had been planning for new teaching staff to be brought into the fold whenever Pernitsky decided to transition into retirement.

“Patti would be the administrator and these other people would be the teachers, so we’ll see how it all comes out in the wash.”

In response to the decision, Karpuk and the board have penned a letter to the church council in hopes that the closure can be reconsidered.

by Dylana Kneeshaw

Kamloops United Church preschool operations not returning after fire restoration work

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