McGuinty Full Day Kindergarten Promise FAILS

UPDATE

Politicians have pulled on working parents’ heart and purse strings only to let them down hard once again. During the 2007 election campaign, the Dalton McGuinty-led Liberal government of Ontario had pledged to turn the province’s half-day kindergarten program into a full school day with before and after school care by September 2010. This would mean no more shuttling kindergarteners to and from daycare and school. It would lift a huge financial burden off working parents’ shoulders and allow even more parents to work outside the home. It would represent an institutional commitment to early childhood education and an acknowledgment of the value of families in our society. It would have, rather, because it ain’t going to happen.

You’re going to have to take my word for this news for now, though, because I’m not able to find confirmation of this anywhere on the interweb. I have been scouring Canadian news sources to find out whehter full day kindergarten is still in the works for months now. I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled ever since I realized that Young C will be starting school in the fall of 2010 and that it would be awesome to not have to arrange for childcare for both kids. (Assuming anyone ever wants to cut me a regular paycheque again.) Even though the government did promise to implement a full day kindergarten program, you see, lots of teachers and early childhood educators that I know were skeptical that they would be able to pull it off. I haven’t been able to find any word in the press on the progress of this huge undertaking, though. And just yesterday staffers at an Ontario Early Years Centre revealed that they’d heard in their last regional staff meeting that it had been made official: there would be no full day kindergarten by 2010; it would be put off indefinitely.

My response was first: dammit! I knew it! Then: why is nobody reporting on this? I know at least one family that is actually banking on it. A stay-at-home mom with a three-year-old who is ready to re-enter the workforce, but thinks she might as well wait another year for the full day kindergarten. And in this Toronto neighbourhood, you better get on a gazillion waitlists years in advance if you want good childcare. You need lots of advance planning to get a job these days. (Remember my daycare despair, when trying to get Young C a part-time spot last year?)

So, what happened? I don’t have any official details, and hopefully there will be a bone fide press conference or something pretty soon. But I do know that the price tag on this initiative was in the several billion dollar range and the government just doesn’t have the moola. They would have to double the number of kindergarten staff and class space for starters. The teacher’s union would insist that all staff would have to be credited teachers as opposed to daycare workers, too. That would, in turn, mean that a lot of early childhood educators would be out of jobs (I imagine) and daycares would no longer offer kindergarten-age programs. This leaves a big childcare gap during summer holidays and other school breaks. It is a big, expensive, complicated mess, in other words, and the McGuinty government clearly hadn’t thought it all through.

I should be steamed at the Ontario Liberals, I guess. I should be mumbling lots of anti-government invective under my breath and planning my own utopian commune. Clearly, that’s what I should be doing. Instead, I just feel dejected and disappointed. I’m not even sure that full day kindergarten is the solution, really. It’s just that the alternative, state-sponsored childcare, is weirdly politically unpopular. It’s only under the guise of real schooling that the government could gain enough support. (Which is why, understandably, the teachers’ union would insist they hire real teachers.) But wouldn’t subsidised childcare for everyone be easier to implement? Wouldn’t that be nice?

(Image courtesy of woodleywonderworks at Flickr.)