Regional council votes to no longer operate regional child care centres
The region says it will implement a transition plan for families currently enrolled
Regional council has voted 12-3 in favour of a proposal to close five child care centres run by the municipal government.
The decision comes after a service review by consulting company KPMG highlighted the move as a cost-saving opportunity.
Councillors met Wednesday for a special council meeting that heard from dozens of members of the public about the proposal. Many parents spoke out against the recommendation.
The region says the regionally run centres supply 1.9 per cent of child care in the region, but uses 10 per cent of the child service budget. The centres have been under review before when their closure was also recommended by KPMG in 2015.
Coun. Jim Erb said the response from the public "was quite significant and very passionate and well thought out" and people presented "reasonable arguments."
But he also said the region needs to build a system that is more equitable and accessible by more families.
"For me this isn't about dollars and cents. It's about creating a system that's fairer, more equitable, sustainable and accessible for the whole community. Of the 14,000 spaces that we have for child care, the region was providing approximately 200 of them and so, access to those spaces was not equal to other people in the community," Erb said in an interview Thursday morning on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition.
He said there are 75 children in system currently who will be going to junior kindergarten in September 2021. That leaves 85 children who are in care who will need to find a new location, and Erb said regional staff have committed to work on a transition plan so those families are not left without care.
'There's no plan'
Mother Tsitsi Muyambo, who has one child in care in a regional centre and one on the wait list to get in, said she was disappointed in council's decision.
"I'm disappointed for the teachers for the kids, for myself. I am disappointed for our efforts. It feels like it was predetermined and we all did a whole song and dance for nothing," she said in an interview Thursday morning.
"More disappointing for me is that there's no plan," she added.
Muyambo says as a Black woman, she worries what the decision will mean for her.
"In the end, it's going to marginalize me even further or maybe end up leading to me leaving the workforce. So how does that then become equity? You hear from the people who have the lived experience and you still go ahead and disregard it," she said.
The service review is also recommending changes to museum services, facilities management, public transit and the region's multimedia services like graphic design.