The number of students enrolled in Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) after school care programs in Cold Lake has declined this year.
Jimmi Lou Irvine, associate superintendent of teaching and learning with NLPS, explained the change to the board of trustees at their Sept. 9 meeting.
“Happy House Daycare opened up their daycare program on the north side of Cold Lake this last year, so there’s some belief that some of the decreasing numbers in our program can be attributed to that,” she said.
One of the impacts is a significantly low number of children in some of their programs at their schools, including North Star Elementary.
“There’s only two full-time students registered in that program, and 10 casual students. What that means is we have a schedule for those two, and then there’s 10 students that are able to drop-in at anytime over the course of the month. But, we don’t know when those students might be there,” Irvine explained.
As a result of only having two full-time attendees, NLPS made the decision to discontinue the after care program they offer at North Star.
“What we’re facing at this point is closure of that out of school care program, based on the fact, with only two students subscribed to it, it’s costing our program substantial dollars to keep it open,” she said.
NLPS plans to end the program in November of this year. Their staff and the families impacted had been notified before the meeting.
“We wanted to ensure that the employee was left with adequate notice, and also to allow more than adequate notice for the families to find alternative care,” Irvine noted.
Irvine described the decision as unfortunate for the parents that rely on the after school care provided by NLPS.
“At the same time, in order to keep all the other programs viable, we can’t have a program that isn’t self sustainable,” she added.
Due to the location of North Star to Happy House Daycare, Irvine noted the families in question had other options.
“They can request the services of Happy House Daycare as long as there’s room. I don’t know what their circumstances are, but the proximity is they do have a program that’s very close. We’ve also offered them an alternative, although it involves some transportation for them. We’re trying to accommodate them, but at the same time, we know that we can’t offer a program when we don’t have the viable numbers.”
A concern Irvine brought up about the viability of their after school programs was the labour standard for employers to pay a worker a minimum of three hours for a shift.
“We had to adjust our program and the way we allocate our funds out so we can still manage. We haven’t really increased our prices, but it’s costing our program additional dollars due to the fact that we have to pay that minimum,” she explained.
