Parents 'caught off guard' by new charges for previously free kindergarten program in southeast Manitoba

Parents of hundreds ofkindergartners who attend a southeastern Manitoba afternoon school program say they're upset and may not be able to afford a newfee the division will charge after providing the program for free for a decade.

The Seine River School Division notified parents early this month that come January, they will have to pay $10 per day, or $190 per month, for their children to participate in the Kids at Play program.

"It completely caught us off guard," said Chad Kessler, whose daughter Olivia Kessleris inkindergarten atcole St. Adolphe and attends Kids at Play.

"We won't have to pay extra for daycare because we work opposite shifts," so one parent will be home, he said.

"However, it's unfortunate that we won'tbe able to afford that extra cost, and we're going to have to take our daughter out of that program."

The divisionboard arrived at the decision after a financial review this summer showed the need for cost-saving measures, according to Seine River superintendent Ryan Anderson.

The division, based in Lorette, also includes schools in St. Nortbert, La Salle, St. Adolphe,Ile des Chnes, Ste. Anne, Richer and La Broquierie in southeastern Manitoba.

About 350 students across 11 schools participate in theprogram, which has been free since its inception about a decade ago, according to the school board.The board says it costs about $800,000-$850,000 annually to operate.

Kids at Playoffers a range of activities in the afternoon once kindergarten class lets out, and that incidentally removes the need for afternoon child care for some families.

'Lesser of 2 evils': Superintendent

Anderson acknowledged families counton Kids at Playas a form of afternoon child care, even if that isn't the need it'sprimarily designed to serve.

"We recognized that anything other than introducing a fee-for-services model potentially impacted families in a greater way, and I know that that doesn't necessarily sit well with families to hear that this is the lesser of two evils," he said.

"But when we looked at the alternative options that we had available to us as a school division, we didn't want families to be put in more of a precarious situation than this by having less options available to them."

There are other cost-saving measures impacting internal operations the division is instituting a hiring freeze on vacant positions but the new bus fee and Kids at Playprogram fee are the two likely to "dramatically affect families," said board chair Wendy Bloomfield.

Theprogram has never been fully covered through provincial funding. The same is true of the division offering bus servicefor students in kindergarten to Grade 4 studentsbetween 800 metres and 1.6 kilometres from their schools, said Bloomfield.

Bloomfield suggested the division is facing enhanced financial pressures because it can no longer rely on using a special levy to raiseeducation property taxes locally to pay for programs not covered by the province.

The Progressive Conservative government announced plans in 2019 to gradually phase out the education property tax for homeowners and farm property owners, and come up with a different way to fund education.

But Bloomfield said Seine River is a growing school division and the taxation policy has restricted its ability to cover costs.

"We have a lot of new development, so whatover the years often was contributed to non-provincially funded programs to address community local needs has now been taken away," she said Monday.

"Now that's part of thereeling effect that we're going through trying to figure out how to cope with that."

'We didn't budget for this'

Kessler said he and other parents might have decided not to enrol their children had the board and division made the decision before the beginning of the school year.

"I think it is beneficial to my daughter, but one of the reasons that we did enrol her was because of the fact that it was offered for free," he said. "We already have her enrolled in other extra extracurriculars and we didn't budget for this."

Households that make $50,000 or less will qualify for a subsidy for the program, according to the division.

Amanda Senkowski, secretary-treasurer of the board, said the division is committed to working with families who don't qualify.

Senkowski acknowledged costs have gone up for families and the board recognized "this is a really unfortunate timing" with the school year already underway.

"We wrestled with it.... We're going to offer as [many] flexible payment plans as we can, so it's not like you must pay or your child can't show up," saidSenkowski.

"Ifwe're seeing there's pockets of families [that]are turning down the service and we're not seeing the participation that we were hoping for ... we will be reaching out to those families just to see what the barriers were or what kind of led to their decision, if there's a way that we can work with them even if they didn't qualify for the subsidy."

Kessler said he and other parents have reached out to their local MLA, Ron Schuler (Springfield-Ritchot), with their concerns.

A delegation of parents including Kessler will be repeating those at the school board meeting Tuesday night.