A proposal that could help to provide Maple Ridge families with affordable daycare and help mitigate the expected school closures across the district will be voted on by school board officials tonight.

The motion, put forward by school board chair Cheryl Ashlie, would see empty classrooms across the district used to house privately-operated daycares.

While exact details of how the daycares would operate and what the school board would provide operators has yet to be determined, Ashlie says the space would likely be donated by the board in-kind.

This, she says, would result in lower operating costs, to be passed on as lower daycare fees for Maple Ridge families.

So far, the school board has received 20 requests from potential daycare operators wishing to access classroom space.

Ashlie hopes the daycare spaces would be considered as part of the Ministry of Education's guideline that school districts must have an overall capacity level of 110 per cent or more in their schools before they can qualify for provincial funding to build new ones.

"If we get the ministry to accept [the daycare space] as part of the 110 per cent, then it will ultimately address the number of schools we close," she said….

While many areas of the district have experienced declines in student population in recent years, schools in east Maple Ridge are experiencing the opposite, and have quickly become overcrowded as new housing developments in the area attract families with school-aged children….

Ashlie said attracting out-of-district children to Maple Ridge daycares could also increase student enrolment when the children become school-aged, and is just one of the many things the board is looking at to shore up student enrolment.

"We want to take other districts kids," she said. "We're not shy about that."

She said the board is also looking at programs like the Langley Fine Arts School, trade apprenticeship programs and partnerships with post-secondary institutions as ways to attract out-of-district students.

"We have quality schools so we are building on that," she said.