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Ontario Budget: Child Care and Anti-Poverty Advocates Cheer Liberal-NDP Deal
Source: Toronto Star, April 24, 2012
Excerpt: "Tuesday's Liberal-NDP budget deal will save about 2,000 Toronto daycare subsidies and ensure the province's poorest residents aren’t ignored, child care and anti-poverty advocates say. The Liberals added $242 million over three years to help stabilize the province's struggling child care sector as 4- and 5-year-olds move into all-day kindergarten. They also boosted both welfare and disability benefits by 1 per cent at a cost of $55 million. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath had originally asked for just disability rates to increase by 1 per cent."
Affordable Daycare Pays Off in Many Ways
Source: Globe and Mail, April 23, 2012
Excerpt: "Surprise! The much-maligned Quebec daycare program, often described as an unaffordable luxury, might actually be a good financial deal for both the provincial and federal governments.... In 2011, half of Quebec preschoolers (215,000) were enrolled in daycare--an increase of 43 per cent in the past decade, compared to 20 per cent in the rest of Canada. According to the Sherbrooke University study, women with children under 15 and especially single mothers were proportionately the largest group to enter the work force since the birth of the program. During the same period, the income of families headed by women rose by 81 per cent."
Janet Bagnall: $7 Daycare: The Alberta Take Vs. the Truth
Source: Montreal Gazette, April 20, 2012
Excerpt: "Instead of wishing Quebec’s $7-a-day daycare system an early death, Alberta would do better to breathe some life into one of its own. Our subsidized system doesn’t cost Quebec, the federal government or any other province a dime. It is fully self-sufficient, bringing in more money than it costs in subsidies. Last week, a paper put out by the Université de Sherbrooke’s research chair on fiscal policy and public finances showed that for every $100 the province put in, it got back $104. The federal government made out like a bandit, getting an extra $43 for putting in exactly $0."
High Conflict Between Parents Affects Kids' Learning and Future Health
Source: Globe and Mail, April 19, 2012
Excerpt: "High conflict between parents can affect children's brain development and interfere with their ability to learn, a leading child psychiatrist warned Thursday. The trauma caused by duelling adults can boost stress to such high levels that it affects the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory, Dr. Jean Clinton, a clinical psychiatrist and professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, told a forum on high conflict and emotional harm. "Childhood experiences build the brain and build the reactivity of the stress system, and the damaging impact of that may not be shown for many, many years," said Clinton, who has worked with children and families for 25 years."
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Playing to Treat Autism
Source: The National (CBC), April 6, 2012 [video]
Description: "The segment highlights some important findings from [thE Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative (MEHRI)] clinical research. A team of therapists trained in MEHRIT, a DIR-based intervention, worked with parents to support their child’s motor capacities, sensory capacities, biological regulation, emotional regulation, and communication capacities. All of this is done within the context of play-based, parent-child interactions."
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms at 30
Source: Toronto Star, April 16, 2012
Excerpt: "Thirty years ago, on April 17, 1982, Queen Elizabeth, sitting under a wet and gloomy sky in front of Canada’s Parliament Buildings, proclaimed in force the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms--a key element of the new Constitution Act. This event did not bring about a transformation of Canada’s political life--it has not significantly added sensitivity to human rights to our politics. But what it did do was bring a missing legal instrument to Canadian liberal democracy: constitutional entrenchment of such basic rights as freedom of association, speech and religion, due process and equality."
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Ontario Teachers Feel Betrayed by ‘Education Premier’, Union Says
Source: Globe and Mail, April 15, 2012
Excerpt: " For someone who calls himself the province’s Education Premier, Dalton McGuinty is ushering in an era of labour strife with the very constituents he spent the past 8½ years wooing. It’s a battle that also hits close to home: Mr. McGuinty’s wife, Terri, is a Kindergarten teacher. But with the province facing a $15.3-billion deficit, Mr. McGuinty’s minority government is in a much bigger fight to preserve the improvements it has made in education and health care: smaller class sizes, full-day kindergarten, more family doctors, shorter waiting times for key medical procedures. If the government were to cut funding for health care and education, it would in essence renounce everything that got it elected in the first place."
Peel, ON: Daycare Task Force Holds First Meeting
Source: mississauga.com, April 13, 2012
Excerpt: "Experts in the field, among them Jim Grieve, former education director with the Peel District School Board, touted the importance of starting youngsters on the path of learning early, and how Ontario’s full-day kindergarten initiative will give more children a better start in life. Grieve and others were invited to address the newly formed task force as it embarks on a series of consultations to help Peel decide whether to stay in the daycare business…. In January, politicians decided to form the Council Task Force to engage in further consultations after a staff recommendation to close Peel’s 12 child care centres upset residents. Peel launched the daycare study after the Province announced it would introduce all-day kindergarten by 2014, which the Region expects to lower demand for child care. The report proposed the $12 million Peel spends on centres annually be redirected to licensed, non-profit and commercial daycares if the 12 centres were closed."
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D'Amato: Full-Day Kindergarten Worth the Expense
Source: Waterloo Record, April 13, 2012
Excerpt: "Is it expensive for Ontario taxpayers to provide kindergarten all day, every day, to four- and five-year-olds? Yes. But is it worth it? New information from the Waterloo Region District School Board is making a persuasive case for the answer: "Yes." The public school board started phasing in all-day kindergarten in 12 elementary schools in the 2010-11 school year. About 1,500 students in these schools graduate each year from senior kindergarten into Grade 1. By the end of the 2009-10 school year, when the students were in kindergarten only half the day, just 55 per cent of them were able to meet the reading standard expected of a child entering Grade 1. But by the end of the 2010-11 school year, after the kindergarten students had received a year of full-day instruction, 71 per cent were up to expected reading levels."
US - Making the Case for Pre-K: Some Fiscal and Economic Arithmetic
Source: Investing in Kids, April 6, 2012
Excerpt: "However, we also need some short-run arguments. People want to know what early childhood programs can do today. And there is concern among some groups about government debt and spending that must be addressed. I think we need to show how early childhood programs can address our current economic crisis, as well as our long-run debt problems."
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ON: 'Millionaires or Daycares?' Horwath Takes McGuinty to Task Over Spending Cuts Challenge
Source: Globe and Mail, April 11, 2012
Excerpt: "…Ms. Horwath said she was "taken aback" by Mr. McGuinty's comments. She said the Premier conveniently ignored the fact that her key proposal - a tax-the-rich scheme - would raise additional annual revenues of just over half a billion dollars, money that she wants the government to spend on giving hydro consumers a break on electricity prices and more day care spaces. I'm waiting now for him to make a decision," Ms. Horwath said in an interview. "He's got to make the tough choice now. Is it millionaires or day cares?""
Toronto: Classroom Assistants Respond to Education Industry Demands
Source: Globe and Mail, April 11, 2012
Excerpt: "Hundreds of education assistants will be cut from Toronto schools next school year as the Toronto District School Board struggles to cope with a large projected deficit and the costs of full-day kindergarten. Trustees decided late Wednesday that 430 of 493.5 education assistant jobs should be cut in order to generate about $22-million in savings for next school year. The board will also be hiring 406 early childhood educators who are required to staff full-day kindergarten classrooms…. Through that agreement, education assistants will be given a two-year window to become certified as early childhood educators. Humber will offer the necessary courses in the evenings and during school holidays, and education assistants will be allowed to work in full-day kindergarten classrooms."
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US: Early Child Care, Education Investments Pay Off for Kansas Businesses, Report Says
Source: Kansas City Business Journal, April 9, 2012
Excerpt: "Kansas City-area business leaders are touting a report that says investing in early child care and education will generate an economic boost for Kansas businesses and help communities in the long term. The report by America’s Edge said that for every dollar invested in early care and education, an additional 68 cents is generated in Kansas, for a total $1.68 of spending in-state. Conversely, cutting this spending would eliminate 68 cents on top of every $1 cut."
Age Differences Play Key Role in Early Learning
Source: Toronto Star, April 6, 2012 (editorial)
Excerpt: " With the Ontario government committed to implementing full-day kindergarten across the province, parents will be able to enrol their children in school full time as young as 3 years, 8 months. The program promises a stronger start in school, which includes improving children’s reading, writing and math skills. Yet research has shown that at such a young age, how a child fares in school can be significantly influenced by one seemingly insignificant factor: when they were born. How old a child is relative to their classmates when they start school can have a major impact on their future."
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US: Pre-K Education Pays Off, $16 to $1
Source: Wausau Daily Herald (US), April 5, 2012
Excerpt: "a new study from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute runs the numbers and finds that on purely economic grounds, there are huge returns to society on an investment in kids before they reach kindergarten…. WPRI is a right-leaning think tank but not a propaganda shop, and its study, "The Economic Power of Early Childhood Education in Wisconsin," was authored by Minneapolis Federal Reserve economist Rob Grunenwald and former Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau analyst Don Bezruki. They conclude that in the long term, the economic returns on early childhood education can be "as high as $16 for every $1" spent."
BC: How Much Should Child Care Workers Get Paid?
Source: News 1130, April 5, 2012
Excerpt: "When it comes to affordable child care, Crystal Janes with the West Coast Child Care Resource Centre says "it's extremely expensive for families" and calls the situation a crisis. But there's another contributing factor: the issue of retention. "There's a challenge in finding qualified care providers to stay and work in the programs because the salaries are so low, and often without benefits. Within five years, 50 per cent of the people that entered the field will leave the field because the salaries are too low," she argues. That's why Janes is calling for better wages as part of a government-funded universal day care program that wouldn't cost parents more than $10 a day. "The Early Childhood Advocates of BC and the Coalition of Childcare Advocates are supporting a $25 an hour wage." She tells us the average wage varies around the province, but in some places, it's $14 an hour."
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MB: NDP Slows Child-Care Funding Increases
Source: Winnipeg Free Press, April 5, 2012
Excerpt: "The Selinger government is asking parents to pay more for daycare as it wrestles with a $1.1-billion budget deficit. The NDP will increase funding to child-care centres by one percent per year for two years, one of the lowest increases since the party took power in 1999, Family Services Minister Jennifer Howard said Wednesday…. Fees for parents of infants and preschool children will go up by $1 a day and fees for parents of school-age children will go up by 35 cents a day. The new fees take effect July 1 and will go up again by the same amounts July 1, 2013. Fees have remained generally stable since 2001."
Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation Contributes to Children's Centre Destroyed by Floods
Source: CNW, April 3, 2012
Excerpt: "The Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation is contributing $25,000 to help young children heal following last month's devastating floods. "The Future Footprints Early Learning Centre has a critical role to play in helping preschool children understand the disaster and to feel the solace and security of their community," says the Foundation's chair, the Honourable Margaret Norrie McCain. The funding will be used to re-establish the early learning and child care centre in the elementary school and to provide temporary accommodations for the program until the necessary school repairs are made."
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Canada is Not Doing Right by its Under-45 Citizens
Source: Vancouver Sun, April 3, 2012
Excerpt: "Many in Canada are growing nervous about the risk of intergenerational tension. Regrettably, last week's federal budget stokes these fires. Although there was lots of talk about generations surrounding the budget, none of it engaged adequately with the social, economic and environmental trends that make intergenerational inequity a real problem in Canada. Instead, Conservatives co-opted generational language to shrink government, while the opposition distorted it to defend much of the status quo. Lost in the middle are generations of Canadians under age 45, whose standards of living don’t approximate what Canadians in, or near, retirement inherited back in the late 1960s to mid-'70s."
ON: Education Minister Says Help for Day-Care Centres is Coming
Source: insideToronto, April 2, 2012
Excerpt: "As four- and five-year-old children graduate to full-day kindergarten, Minister of Education Laurel Broten says Ontario's day-care system will not be left in the lurch. Child-care operators were upset to find no mention of an extension for the city's child-care subsidy in the provincial Liberal government's 2012 budget unveiled on Tuesday, March 27. In response, Broten did confirm this week that $51 million is coming. That money should assist with the funding gap identified by an earlier city staff report that stated Toronto could lose as many as 7,300 child-care spaces if the province doesn't come through with more than $50 million in capital and operating grants."
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AB: All Parties Would Support Full-Day Kindergarten
Source: St. Albert Gazette, March 31, 2012
Excerpt: "While there are no votes to be gained from attendees, parents of full-day kindergartners should be pleased to know all candidates say their party would support the program…. During her party’s leadership race last fall, Progressive Conservative leader Alison Redford pledged to bring in full-day kindergarten within a year of taking office. PC candidate Doug Horner said Redford couldn’t swing it within a year, but the party is absolutely committed to giving parents that choice. He said the only reason for the delay has been finding space in schools."
Canada's Children Told to Fend for Themselves
Source: Campaign 2000, March 29, 2012 (news release)
Excerpt: "The federal budget not only ignores the current needs of Canada's children, states Campaign 2000, but downloads much of today's costs onto them. The 639,000 children living in poverty will be joined by many more because of a budget that concentrates on business and global markets, while failing to address the critical need for universal childcare and affordable housing, public supports that assist families in realizing their economic potential."
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