As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. That is, it seems, something we must now take literally. Some much loved and needed preschool, child care and StrongStart services face being squeezed out of their spaces at North Vancouver schools as enrolment and demand for classrooms creep upward.
It was a win-win solution for the
parents and the school district when student population was dropping to fill the empty rooms and provide space for child care, which is constantly in short supply.
In the past, the province provided extra capital funding to see these types of spaces included in new school builds, as we saw with Queen Mary and Ridgeway elementary schools. But those days are over and the need for child care is arguably greater than ever.
Thanks to the cost of living consistently outpacing income, the days of raising a child with one parent working and one parent at home are over – and that assumes there are two parents chipping in at equal measure, which we know isn’t always the case.
Strictly speaking, our schools are responsible for educating our children from K-12 but in practice we’ve come to rely on them as hubs for the community.
The municipalities chip in to offer nominal rent to non-profit child-care operations where they can but that too is outside their mandate.
If allowing parents to work and giving children their best foot forward is something we as a society value, we’d ask the province to invest in it. We have new schools waiting to be built and old ones languishing unused. Let’s put them to good use.
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