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A day-care centre that serves as a training ground for early childhood education students at St. Lawrence College will close this summer after almost 40 years of continuous operation.
College president Chris Whitaker said yesterday the cost of running the Early Childcare Centre at King Street and Country Club Drive has "far exceeded revenues" for the past five years.
He said the fact St. Lawrence pays the day-care staff union-scale earnings instead of the lower wages that are typical of most child-care centres contributed to its demise.
"Our people are well paid," Whitaker said. "We're paying people as they should be paid in our society. It's a comment on where we place our values.
"If we were paying our folks similar wages to their colleagues at other private centres, it might be viable [to keep the centre open]."
Whitaker said closing the day care is part of a system-wide deficit reduction plan that involves the suspension of six St. Lawrence programs, including two at the Kingston campus.
The college had tried without success to absorb the day-care deficits within the education program's budget, but Whitaker said the high cost of running the day care threatened the future of the college's early childhood education program.
The day care, which has closed every year for the month of August, will close for good on July 31.
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Angie Berman, supervisor of Pladec Day Care, did a placement at the St. Lawrence day care while she was a student in the early childhood education program. She praised it as an "amazing child-care centre." Pladec came close to folding last year after mould was discovered during renovations to its building in the Beechgrove complex on the old psychiatric hospital grounds.
The mouldy area was subsequently closed and sealed, but in the meantime, Pladec staff and board members began house-hunting and the non-profit centre reopened Monday in a renovated church at Helen and Mack streets.
"My heart goes out to them," Berman said yesterday. "The news of them closing is so dear to our hearts because we understand what they're going through."
Berman said the Pladec phone has been ringing off the hook with parents from the St. Lawrence facility asking to have their children placed on the waiting list. The college day care has 45 children, 35 of whom belong to staff and students.
Berman admits they have little chance of getting into Pladec, which has 130 names on a waiting list for infant care, 100 names waiting for a toddler space and 100 names waiting for a pre-school opening. "The community has no idea how bad it is," Berman said, "and it's like this all over the city."
Whitaker said the college will help families to find spaces in other day cares, but he acknowledged the long waiting lists.
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He added that there is no immediate plan to make use of the day-care facilities once they are vacant. The college would entertain any offers to reopen the day care independently of St. Lawrence, he said.
"Our folks in the program staff knew they had a challenge and have done a tremendous job to find creative ways to deal with it," Whitaker said, "but it's got to the point where it's very, very difficult to make any case [to keep it open]."
The St. Lawrence College day care opened in 1969 in a historic home that backs onto King Street opposite Lake Ontario Park.
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- reprinted from The Kingston Whig-Standard