The Toronto Star
APS Daycare at North Preparatory Junior Public School’s families are facing distress as the daycare is to face eviction in June.
The centre, near Spadina and Eglinton Ave. is among at least three school-based daycares in the city that are being squeezed for space by schools. Another 30 daycares are at risk due to provincial pressure on the Toronto District School Board to close schools with low enrollment and to sell those that have already been closed but are housing other community uses.
APS Daycare, which serves 85 preschoolers, kindergarten and school-aged children, has operated at the Forest Hill-area school for 28 years.
“We really need the school board to understand that every single one of those child-care spaces is just as valued as any elementary school space,” said Jane Mercer of the Toronto Coalition for Better Child Care. “They haven’t got their head around the fact that child care has moved into the Ministry of Education. Child care has moved into the schools.”
The Toronto situation is emblematic of the overall problem with child care in Ontario, said Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. “We need a real child-care plan with targets and timetables,” she said. “It could start with the school system embracing child care as an equal partner in the education and care of our children.”
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