On Tuesday night, the New Westminster school board voted to relocate two infant-toddler child-care centres that are currently operated by the Lower Mainland Purpose Society in two downtown-area schools.
School District 40 will be converting the community spaces in those schools to classrooms for September 2024 to cope with overcrowding and rapidly growing enrolment.
Ready Set Grow, the daycare at Fraser River Middle School, will be relocated to the grounds of Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary School in the West End. The Qayqayt Children’s Centre, meanwhile, will move from École Qayqayt Elementary School to F.W. Howay Elementary School in Massey Victory Heights.
Parents have raised vocal opposition to the move, pointing out that the relocation to less-central sites will make child care difficult — or, in some cases, unworkable — for downtown families.
Two parents, Laura Kwong and Allison Clavelle, had presented the district with an alternative proposal in an attempt to stave off the move.
They suggested creating a portable annex on the grounds of city hall, on Royal Avenue, that could house Grade 5 and 6 students from Qayqayt and Fraser River Middle. The annex would help to fill the gap while the district awaits funding for and construction of a new elementary school on the FRMS site, which isn’t expected to be completed until 2027.
School district, city meet to discuss child care
The school district met with the City of New Westminster last week to discuss issues around child care and school capacity.
The city had been encouraging the school district to save the child-care space in downtown schools and look for other options for classrooms.
“The relocation of these vital services to other parts of the city will be a functional loss for families in the downtown, an area where many families have limited transportation options,” Mayor Patrick Johnstone wrote in a letter to the school board on Nov. 29. “The downtown is already undersupplied with non-profit child-care spaces, especially for infant-toddler care.”
A city report presented at the Dec. 12 council meeting outlined the high need for child-care spaces in the city and particularly in the downtown — the neighbourhood with the highest rate of early childhood vulnerability in the city.
The report notes the city’s communication with the school district “emphasizes exploring retention of the purpose-built child-care facilities” and “identifying other options to address school capacity issues.”
School board chair Gurveen Dhaliwal said she couldn’t provide specifics of what the board and city discussed at their in-camera meeting on Dec. 9. But she said the school board and city have a shared interest in ensuring that all levels of child care are available to local families.
She also acknowledged the suggestion for joint advocacy by the city and school district to push senior governments for more funding for child care and school capacity in New Westminster.
Purpose Society continuing to look for downtown options
Dhaliwal said that, in the end, the decision to relocate the two child-care centres rested with the Purpose Society, which leases space from the school district.
Purpose, in a statement provided to the school board, said it accepts the planned move of the two daycare centres.
“We have been working to find alternative solutions to relocate the centres closer to the downtown core, as most of the families served by the two centres reside in that area,” the statement said. “We discovered that finding new sites, that meet zoning and licensing requirements, and meeting a tight deadline make it very challenging.”
The statement said the society is continuing to look at options for a child-care centre downtown, including the possibility of converting an existing space owned by the society into child care.
But, if that happens, it would be in addition to the centres at Tweedsmuir and Howay — which are planned to be ready to open by the time the daycares need to vacate their current spaces in March 2024.
“The Purpose Society will work alongside of the New Westminster school district to mitigate the effects of these moves on parents,” the statement said.
SD40 must prioritize K-12 enrolment: school board chair
Dhaliwal said the district is faced with the reality that students are already being displaced from their catchment schools due to lack of space.
Kindergarten registration at École Qayqayt Elementary School is expected to require a lottery system for September 2023 because of the enrolment crunch, and 33 students in the district have already been diverted to schools other than their catchment school.
“I think that was a key piece of us prioritizing K-to-12 regular enrolment, and it's a hard reality, but that's at the centre of the decisions that we were making and, really, ensuring no net loss of childcare,” Dhaliwal said.
“We know this isn’t an ideal solution, but having the ability to relocate instead of remove is really positive.”
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