School District 72 is soon entering phase two of its childcare program expansion, which includes four new additional sites.
The Ministry of Education and Child Care has already approved all four new locations. Architects are already working on designs.
The district built seven sites in town, now fully staffed and operational, during phase one.
"We are now in the reconciliation phase, which means the province is going through our paperwork to make sure our expenses are appropriate. We've met all the other conditions. We came in about $400,000 under budget among the seven projects, so we've requested that we be allowed to transfer that to our phase two projects," said Associate Superintendent Phillip Cizmic.
Building of two of the sites may start this summer. The district's focus on the four new sites is before and after-school care and three to five-year-old children.
"One of the things that we've heard in the community, especially coming out of healthcare, is that the before-school-age needs are there. We are hoping to address some of those needs in the community with these fields, and so we're excited about that," said Cizmic.
Cixmic said that the expansion has been "extremely successful" and has exceeded his expectations.
He also said that afternoon care is always more in demand than in the morning. The district's after-school programs are 92 per cent full at six of the sites. Many of them have multi-year wait lists.
The district will be offering child care during the summer break, as they did during the spring break, with 61 children registered (as of June 17) for the summer child care program. The summer care program will only be operating out of three sites.
"We've set it up so we can support healthcare 12-hour shifts if necessary with quite ease. Last year we had about 1o days where health care professionals utilized a 12-hour shit in child care, and that's going to be offered again this year," said Cizmic.
