All-day kindergarten underfunded: Ottawa board

Ontario hasn't provided enough funding to cover all-day kindergarten in Ottawa, says the local public school board.

Funding benchmarks for the program haven't been realistic and will result in "significant extra costs" for the school district, said a letter sent by Cathy Curry, chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, to Premier Dalton McGuinty late last week

Curry told CBC News that the board will have to find $500,000 from other parts of its budget to support full-day kindergarten next year, mainly for teacher and early childhood educator salaries and benefits. According to the Ottawa-Carleton School Board, the problem is that local teachers make more than that provincial funding allocated for their salaries. The board intends to cover the extra costs from its reserve fund.

The Ministry of Education said it will respond directly to Curry about her concerns, and not through the media. So far, the provincial government has committed $200 million toward the all-day kindergarten program for September 2010 and $300 for 2011, as well as $245 million in capital funding.

The phasing in of the all-day program is scheduled to begin this fall, with spaces for about 35,000 of the 240,000 four-and five-year-olds across the province. They include about 50 classes at 22 schools in Ottawa.

Another 15,000 spots will be added province-wide in 2011, but the Ottawa public board still doesn't know which schools they will be added to — something it gets calls about every day from parents, Curry said.

"They're planning their kids lives and their lives and their care situations and they want to know," she added. "And we're saying, well... we don't know when that will be approved."

In her letter, she wrote that the board's other issue, apart from funding was that "the short timelines and late release of program specifics have not been realistic and will impact negatively on the program."

Curry's letter also raised concerns about the province's proposed fee-based before-and after-school programs, saying "inappropriate" salary benchmarks for early childhood educators mean it's unrealistic to for the fees to cover the costs of the program.

All kindergarten students will be allowed to enroll in the program by 2015.