Daycare costs could rise with kindergarten move

Moving kindergarten students out of privately operated daycares and into P.E.I.'s public school system could lead to an increase in cost for parents of pre-school age children.

'It's really going to affect the families.' Carol Ford, Sherwood Parkdale Headstart

On Monday, the province released the report of its kindergarten commissioner, endorsing the recommendation to move kindergarten into the schools in September 2010. But that move will mean a big loss of children in daycares, a loss centres will struggle to deal with.

This fall there will be 50 kids at Sherwood Parkdale Headstart, a non-profit early childcare centre in Charlottetown. About half of them will be in kindergarten, and the rest in pre-k and pre-school programs.

It's simple math, manager Carol Ford told CBC News. Without the provincial money for the kindergarten programs, the daycare has to make up the budget somehow, and increasing fees is a part of the solution.

Even if Ford keeps her centre's numbers upby enrolling more three- and four-year-olds in 2010, what the parents of those pre-schoolers pay is far less than what the province has beenpaying for kindergarten spots.

Some centres will close

At this centre and others, kindergarten has been subsidizing pre-school.

"We still have to pay rent, we still have to pay the same expenses," said Ford.

"The only money we will receive now will be from the parents."

Many parents are already finding coststoo high.

"If they don't work at a job that they don't make exceptional good money, then it's really going to affect the families," she said.

Sonya Corrigan, executive director of the Early Childhood Development Association of P.E.I., said all operators will be in the same bind, having to increase rates. Others will simply shut their doors.

"There will be a shift in centres for sure," said Corrigan.

"There will be some centres that will close, there will be some centres that won't be able to find educators to operate their programs as well."

As it prepares to move kindergartens, the province has begun a review of all early childhood programs. Premier Robert Ghiz is not ruling out the possibility of some sort of funding to keep costs down, or keep centres open.