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Preschool, Day Care Integration Plan Eases
Source: The Japan Times, January 25, 2011
Excerpt: “The Democratic of Japan-led government backed off a bit Monday from a push to integrate the operations of day care facilities with kindergartens and instead offered them financial incentives to merge. The goal of integration was to alleviate both the shortage in day care facilities and their long waiting lists, but the two businesses differ, in that day care centers, which have longer hours, are mainly places for kids to stay, whereas kindergartens are the start of the formal education process. Amid fierce opposition both from day care and kindergarten operators, the government mitigated its goal of integrating all the kindergartens and day care centers into "kodomo-en" (children's facilities) but decided to boost subsidies for those businesses that agree to integrate.”
Full-day Kindergarten at Pinecrest
Source: Pembroke Observer (ON), January 25, 2011
Excerpt: “In what is being hailed a positive step for the community, Pinecrest Public School will begin offering all-day kindergarten in September…. After arriving at the school to take over the principalship last summer, Mr. Zadow was presented with a proposal by kindergarten teachers Kim Stephenson and Patricia Fraser. They convinced him of the validity for a Full Day Every Day Kindergarten (FDED) program and in turn he approached the Renfrew County Public School Board….Pinecrest conducted its own feasibility study with an informal poll of current junior and senior kindergarten students. The response was overwhelming positive…”
Early Learning and Child Care Partners Seek Access to Quality Child Care for All Peel Families
Source: Region of Peel (ON), January 25, 2011 (news release)
Excerpt: “When considering options for child care, parents and caregivers want only the best for their child. But for many families choosing child care often starts with asking, “What can we afford?” Peel’s early learning and child care partners believe child care and early learning is a right for all children – regardless of family income, location or special needs. The challenge in Peel and many other Ontario municipalities is that there are insufficient child care spaces and subsidies available to meet the demand.”
McQuaig: Harper’s Strange Victory
Source: Toronto Star, January 24, 2011
Excerpt: “Canada was a fairly grim place before the Conservatives came to power, Stephen Harper informed us in his weekend speech celebrating five years as prime minister. Among the litany of troubles in those days before Conservatives brought light to a darkened land, Harper said on Sunday, was that “parents were disrespected, really thought more likely to spend money on beer and popcorn than take care of their children. Harper was referring to the previous Liberal government’s plan to introduce a national child-care program, implying it showed Liberals didn’t trust parents to spend money on caring for their children.”
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Pilot Project Provides 'One-Stop Shopping' for Child Development Concerns
Source: Northumberland Today (ON), January 24, 2011
Excerpt: “Building on the research done by Dr. Charles Pascal for the provincial government on early childhood learning, and working with a committee that includes his direction, the pilot project has gone forward under the direction of the Northumberland Child Development Centre in conjunction with a growing number of partners that includes the public and Catholic school boards, the Five Counties Children's Centre, Rebound Child and Youth Services, Northumberland United Way, Northumberland Children's Aid Society, the YMCA Northumberland Ontario Early Years Centres, the local health unit and the Port Hope Community Health Centre, among others, county councillors were told last week.”
Media Advisory: Will Child Care Survive?
Source: MarketWire (Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, Ontario Federation of Labour), January 24, 2011
Excerpt: “Without a new public investment in the 2011 Provincial budget, Ontarians can expect to see child care fees increase from 15 to 30 per cent or cause some programs to close. The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) are launching a provincial tour to call on the Ontario Government to make affordable child care a public priority.”
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Better Way to Better Day Care
Source: Peterborough Examiner (ON), January 24, 2011
Excerpt: “We would like to point out how the current child-care system actually deters providers from becoming licensed. Childcare providers do this job because we love children and the lifestyle suits our families. However, we still need an income to help support our families. With five children in care full time we only earn a modest amount, barely above minimum wage after expenses. Under current regulations, if we want to be licensed we would have to join a licensed agency that would take 20 to 30% of our income. We would also lose our ability to set our own fees, contracts, hours, and educational philosophy.”
Home Child Care Association of Ontario Calls for Coroner’s Inquest into Death in Unlicensed Home Child Care
Source: Home Child Care Association of Ontario, January 21, 2011
Excerpt: “The Home Child Care Association of Ontario represents more than 75 Licensed Home Child Care Agencies, providing licensed, home-based early learning and child care to more than 60 000 children in over 3000 homes across Ontario. Agencies are licensed and individuals contracting with agencies must follow the province’s Day Nurseries Act. Licensed home child care providers can care for no more than two children under 2 years and three under 3 years to a maximum of 5 children; including their own children. Unregulated operators do not have to adhere to the maximum number of children."
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Ottawa Caregivers to Fight Charges of Running Illegal Daycares After Child Drowned on Playdate
Source: Ottawa Citizen, January 20, 2011
Excerpt: “Two caregivers present when a two-year-old boy drowned in a backyard pool in July will defend against charges they operated illegal daycares, their lawyers said Thursday. Cynthia McLellan, the caregiver for Jérémie Audette, was one of a group of daycare operators in the area who brought the children under their care to Wendy Andruszka-Lapierre’s residence…for a playdate. Audette was discovered floating in a large above-ground pool and was pronounced dead at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario after attempts to revive him failed. A police investigation ruled out criminal charges in August, but an investigation by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services found violations under the provincial Day Nurseries Act.”
First Inuit Kindergarten Class in Ontario
Source: Ottawa Start, January 19, 2011
Excerpt: “The Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre (OICC) and R.E.Wilson Public School are celebrating the opening of their Inuit JK/SK Full Day Kindergarten class, the first of its kind in the province…. OCDSB Director of Education Barrie Hammond says, “We are thrilled that this program has come to fruition as the result of considerable work and cooperation of many people in both organizations. The program provides a culturally relevant, early learning experience for Inuit children and their families in a very supportive environment.””
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An Update on School Fees
Source: Social Planning Toronto, January 19, 2011
Excerpt: “Last month, representatives from the Ministry of Education set up a consultation with the Toronto District School Board’s Inner City Advisory Committee to discuss the development of guidelines for fees for learning materials, activities, fundraising, and corporate partnerships…. SPT and the ICAC put forth the following recommendations to the Ministry on the guidelines to protect students/families from these high fees and ensure more equitable access to quality education.”
B.C. Unveils Prototype of Modular Classrooms… To Accommodate Full-Day Kindergartens
Source: The Vancouver Sun, January 19, 2011
Excerpt: “They're big, they're bright and they're brand spanking new. Those were among the comments from enthusiastic parents who attended an unveiling Tuesday in Aldergrove of a prototype of new modular classrooms that will be constructed and shipped to 25 B.C. school districts before fall. They are needed to accommodate an influx of five-year-olds when full-day kindergarten replaces the half-day program in all schools.”
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The Kindergarten Diaries
Source: OISE, January 14, 2011
Excerpt: “OISE graduate student, Kadria Simons, captures the experience of four young students in Kindergarten through photography, finger-puppet interviews and drawings.”
Read article, see photos and children’s drawings and watch videos
Settlement Funding Cuts: Short-term Vision, Long-term Pain
Source: Maytree, January 2011
Excerpt: “In December, while most of us were thinking of the upcoming Holiday Season, many settlement workers in the city were getting pink slips. This was a result of cutbacks to immigrant services implemented by the federal government…. In Ontario, for example, newcomers were more than twice as likely as the Canadian-born to be unemployed. Unemployment numbers released in November 2009 indicated that nearly 20% of recent immigrants in Toronto were jobless.… More needs to be done now to make sure that these recent immigrants don’t fall through the cracks and fail to integrate. Saving money today simply defers the costs that we will have to pay tomorrow, costs that will only multiply with time.”
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First Do No Harm: It’s Time to Address Our Quality Problem
Source: Preschool Matters…Today! (NIEER), January 6, 2011
Excerpt: “At age 2, 12 percent of children in poverty were in center-based care. More than twice as many, 27 percent, were in home-based (nonparental) care. Unfortunately, two-thirds of that home-based care was poor quality and virtually none of it was good. Center-based care was much better, relatively speaking. Only 15 percent was poor quality and 20 percent good or better. With those numbers it should come as no surprise that children from low-income families are not benefiting from, and may even be harmed by, home-based care as it is currently provided.”
Chow Renews Call for Regulated Child Care Program
Source: oliviachow.ca
Excerpt: “MP Olivia Chow, New Democrats Child Care Critic, is calling on Stephen Harper’s Conservatives to establish and fund a national child care program, in the wake of the recent tragic death of a child while in unregulated care. Chow pointed out that with long waiting lists for affordable, high quality and licensed early learning and child care services across the country, working parents desperate for child care have no choice but to rely unregulated child care.”
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Death by Indifference
Source: Toronto Star, January 13, 2011; editorial by Martha Friendly
Excerpt: “The story of a little girl’s death in an unregulated Ontario
child-care home is but one of too many such stories over the past 25 years. This tragedy is unambiguous evidence of the consequences of government failure to build a child-care system.... The real story is found in the Toronto Star’s archives. The past three decades saw a number of well-reported stories about other deaths in unregulated child care, most recently in 2010.”
No Real ‘Choice’ on Child Care
Source: Toronto Star, January 11, 2011
Excerpt: “…Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky, who oversees child care, has brushed aside concerns about safety. The province, she says, gives families the “choice to engage in regulated or non-regulated service.” Choice? What choice is there for parents on waiting lists for a government subsidy so they can afford regulated daycare? The waiting list in Toronto alone is nearly 18,000 children long.”
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Advocates Call for Coroner’s Inquest into Death in Unlicensed Home Child Care
Source: Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (news release)
Excerpt: “Child care advocates are shocked by the death of 14 month old Duy-An Nguyen in an unlicensed home child care. Our condolences go out to her family and everyone affected by this tragedy. As a result of the tragedy, the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care is calling for Coroner’s Inquiry which would investigate the death and system failures in Ontario’s child care system that allowed it to occur.”
Closing the Achievement Gap with Baby Talk
Source: Huffington Post, January 10, 2011
Excerpt: “When it comes to building your child's vocabulary, the answer may be in quantity, not quality. NPR reports that University of Kansas graduate student Betty Hart and her professor, Todd Risley, wanted to figure out the cause of the education gap between the rich and poor. So, they targeted early education and headed a study that recorded the first three years of 40 infants' lives. The conclusion? Rich families talk to their kids more than poor families.”
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In Mission B.C., All-Day Kindergarten is About Native Culture
Source: Globe and Mail, January 3, 2011
Excerpt: “In a small school district in southern British Columbia, full-day kindergarten is about more than just longer days, lunch periods and a more thorough exploration of the alphabet. It’s about cultural awareness. Four schools at the Mission Public Schools district, those with higher proportions of aboriginal students, have offered full-day kindergarten for nearly a decade in a culturally enhanced program.... This school year, that program is being introduced in more than 20 classrooms in the district, as part of B.C.’s rollout of full-day kindergarten for all.”
New Day Care Act Regulations for Nova Scotia
Source: Royal Gazette, December 31, 2010
Description: As of April 1, 2011, regulations in the Day Care Act and the Family Home Day Care Program Regulations will be repealed and replaced. New regulations include exemptions from the definition of “day care” that do not require a license, “a program provided in a public school by a school board for children who will be at least 4 years old on December 31 of the school year in which they are enrolled in the program” and “a pre-primary program under the Pre-primary Education Act.”
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Early Development Key to Future
Source: Lethbridge Herald, December 27, 2010
Excerpt: “In an effort to improve learning outcomes for at-risk children, Alberta Education is funding an early childhood initiative to provide more supports and early intervention programs. The Early Child Development (ECD) Mapping Initiative is a five-year research project that will give school authorities, parents and communities across Alberta information on child development before kindergarten… "It's obvious in our communities that there's some good things happening," she said, adding the pre-kindergarten programs within the district's elementary schools could be one factor in achieving those positive results.”
A One-Stop UN Shop for Kids
Source: Bernard Van Leer Foundation, ED Lisa Jordan, 6 December 2010
Excerpt: “Studies from social service fields have shown that bundling services results in greater outcomes across a wide variety of goals…. In the early 1970’s early childhood specialists realised the same thing as the private sector and since then have been calling for integrated approaches. Yet, for some reason these integrated approaches have failed to materialise….After two months of touring the international early childhood development circuit (UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank) I have realized that somewhere along the way the promise of integration has not blossomed.”
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