Working Mom - New to DaycareBear

[Play and Learn]

Just a tid-bit on the full-day learning:

The government is no longer paying for it, so the school boards have to fork out money to put them all in place. Which is a ton of money! So in the Ottawa and Eastern School boards, they have managed to put full-day learning into the schools that are in the lower income areas. Then once they start making money from those, they'll slowly put them in the rest of the schools.

[Inspired by Reggio]

Just a tid-bit on the full-day learning:

The government is no longer paying for it, so the school boards have to fork out money to put them all in place. Which is a ton of money! So in the Ottawa and Eastern School boards, they have managed to put full-day learning into the schools that are in the lower income areas. Then once they start making money from those, they'll slowly put them in the rest of the schools.

Hmmm - had not heard this? Last I had heard from the Ontario Budget in the news, in all my professional association literature and so forth is that the Liberals have taken a hard line on continuing to fund the Full day EVERY Day initiative and looking for other ways to balance the budget instead ... the plan has ALWAYS been to roll it out slowly - although it is rolling out slower' than the initial projectin with full implementation in every school across Ontario not being until 2015.

The reason being is that they needed time in the pilot schools to work out the KINKS before having it roll out in every school across Ontario - time to train the teachers on the concept of working an a 'team' with a partner that is to be viewed as equal in the room, time to train them on the new curriculum, as well as they need time for CENTRES to adjust to the loss of staff as RECE leave centres to go to school boards, as 4-5 year children leave centres to go to all day early learning ... change is hard enough but change of this size and magnitude definitely takes TIME that's for sure

My understanding is that schools chosen to get it first were based on the SPACE and NEED for sure so low income areas in some regions might have gotten it first for sure - however I know in my home town the RICHER neighborhoods got it first because their schools had the space and the demand from working clients - so it varies vastly between regions. Our school boards already have the lists posted on them of which schools will get it next for 2012, than 2013, 2014 and which ones have to wait until 2015 as some of them have to be 'retrofitted' to account for basically 'twice' the enrollment.

However just to clarify- I was not talking about the full day EVERY day program but more so that the school boards in our region have in addition to this pending change been told they cannot offer 'half day everyday option' anymore which use to be the 'norm' in most schools but were to switch to full day alternating days program to get everyone use' to the new program that will be coming into effect ... so the kids in our Catholic schools go Monday / Wednesday and alternating Fridays ALL day or they are Tuesday / Thursday and alternating Fridays which works AWESOME for arranging childcare around for parents and than we have the Public school board which for some reason thinks a rotating 10 day schedule is the bees knees so those kids are either labelled odds or evens and they go one week Monday / Wednesday / Friday and next week Tuesday / Thursday and than when a PD happens it screws up the rhythm ... its horrible system and IMO was designed to make support for the full day everyday more appealing to ALL parents cause even the stay at home moms I know HATE the alternating day schedule cause they cannot book any extra curricular lessons or anything for their kids cause their days are never the same

[Play and Learn]

The reason being is that they needed time in the pilot schools to work out the KINKS before having it roll out in every school across Ontario - time to train the teachers on the concept of working an a 'team' with a partner that is to be viewed as equal in the room, time to train them on the new curriculum, as well as they need time for CENTRES to adjust to the loss of staff as RECE leave centres to go to school boards, as 4-5 year children leave centres to go to all day early learning ... change is hard enough but change of this size and magnitude definitely takes TIME that's for sure

The funny thing about this, is that in the Ottawa French boards, they have been doing this for 5-10 years! Why not learn from them!?