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September 2020 may be too early for the Vancouver school board to start its childcare program.

But the opening of the school year in 2021 might be the time.

That’s according to education trustee Allan Wong, who had earlier suggested that the school district should run its own before- and after-school childcare.

“What I want at the end of the day is to have a seamless transition for students,” Wong told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview Wednesday (March 4).

Wong explained that with childcare being operated in-house, students “go from before or after school, and they transition to see familiar faces from prior to school and right into it”.

The school board’s facilities planning committee is scheduled to meet later in the day of March 4.

One agenda item is a staff update on childcare, which was written by Lisa Landry and Tara Hamer-Hayley, assistant secretary-treasurer, and rentals and leases supervisor, respectively.

They stated in the report that the provincial government on February 26, 2020 introduced new legislation allowing school boards to provide before- and after-school care.

“The legislation clarifies that it is within a board’s mandate to operate before and after school care directly, and authorizes the Minister of Education to make orders regarding policies on childcare,” Landry and Hamer-Layley explained.

The legislation aligns with what Wong had proposed to the board.

On January 27 this year, the school board unanimously approved Wong’s motion for a demonstration project.

“My motion is basically to prepare us for that move,” Wong said in the March 4 interview, referring to the board’s potential operation of its own childcare program.

In their report to the board, Landry and Hamer-Hayley noted that the School Act requires education boards to promote the use of their properties to licensed childcare providers.

According to the two, the Vancouver board of education’s portfolio of childcare spaces more than doubled over the past decade.

From 1,825 seats in 50 programs in 2008, the number increased to 4,293 seats in 117 programs in 2019, Landry and Hamer-Hayley reported.

They also noted that the childcare programs operating in Vancouver public schools are “primarily school-age and represent approximately 68% of group school-age childcare in the City of Vancouver”.

The programs are operated by different provincially-licensed childcare providers.

Landry and Hamer-Hayley also noted that multipurpose rooms within elementary schools are well-suited spaces for childcare programs.

They likewise mentioned that “not all elementary schools are equipped with a multipurpose room”.

There are eight elementary schools without multipurpose rooms: Britannia, Champlain Heights, False Creek, Fraser, Lord, McKechnie, Tecumseh and Weir.

“Due to the lack of multipurpose rooms at these schools, creating school-age childcare in shared space at these schools is not feasible as the space is used by the schools,” Landry and Hamer-Hayley reported.

In the interview, Wong told the Straight that he wants the school district to have a conversation with groups that are operating childcare programs in Vancouver schools.

“There's currently a lot of daycare in our system already,” Wong said. “It's not a matter of just, you know, taking over.”

According to Wong, he wants to ensure “what's in the best interest of our school-age children”.