New child care centre at Campbell River's Ripple Rock Elementary opens

The first of seven new childcare facilities in School District 72's (SD72) area was completed on April 12, just outside of Ripple Rock Elementary.

"It's very important for school district because now we can provide livable wage jobs to our educational assistants, and that has been a long-standing challenge in education," says Kat Eddy, chair of the district's school board of education. "Educational assistants are really the heart of their schools in a lot of cases. They are working with the most venerable children on a regular basis."

The livable wage, Eddy says, will entice the educational assistants to stay within the community while building and maintaining relationships with the children in their care outside of a school environment.

"Also what it does is it helps to alleviate some very significant challenges when it comes to working families and childcare. There are working adults who can't return to work because they can't find any childcare to free up their day," says Eddy. "It will improve the experience for children and all families around the community."

SD72 applied for funding from the provincial government in November 2021 and was approved in April 2022. The funding amounts to $8.1 million, which will all go to the construction of seven childcare facilities, including one on Quadra Island (which will be operated in partnership with the Quadra Children's Centre).

"It's the largest construction project in the district since the construction of Ripple Rock Elementary School, which opened in 2005," says Jennifer Patrick, the district's manager of communications. "This has been 100 per cent paid for through government funding; there has been no additional cost to the school district."

Around $1.2 million is earmarked to cover construction, furniture and resources for each of the seven facilities. The facilities will look identical, with the same design plans used for cost savings and speeding up construction.

"Our license for each centre is 24 children at any one time with two adults supervising, but the centre (Ripple Rock specifically) services at least 30 children between before and after-school care, depending on the families' needs," says Patrick.

The facility at Ripple Rock is the first of the seven completed. Construction on Ocean Grove Child Care Centre will finish shortly. The Pinecrest Child Care Centre will be completed in May 2024. Centres at Cedar, Georgia Park and Sandowne will open sometime in June 2024, while August 2024 is the target for the centre on Quadra Island.