Day-care work not on their agenda
Child-care centres struggle for staff as students seek higher-paying opportunities elsewhere
The Edmonton Journal/Vancouver Sun online
Mike Sadava
April 27, 2008

EDMONTON - Jessica Yawnghwe and Carlin Knittle should be the future of child care, but they won't be working at a traditional day-care centre.

They are about to graduate from the early childhood education program…. With that level of training, they could work at any day-care centre… but they won't.

Knittle, 21, loved the course and feels she will be able to use the knowledge in her career, but right now she is planning to complete a Bachelor of Education degree. Her two years at MacEwan will give her one-year credit towards that degree.

"A lot of people we have been going with won't (go) into the field," Knittle says.

She thinks she might want to buy a house some day, live a normal middle-class life, and you can't do that on $15 per hour.

Others are taking day-care jobs, but moving to Ontario and British Columbia, where there are more high-quality centres that pay better wages, she said.

Yawnghwe, 28, has been working on and off in day care since she was 17. … During her jobs, and in her placements from the college, she saw a lot of stress because of the shortage of staff.

She was hoping to be mentored by professionals, but it turned out that she was just another body to help out.

She got lucky, and managed to get a job in the kindergarten at the University of Alberta's Child Studies Centre, which pays considerably more than most jobs in child care.

Yawnghwe doesn't think it's logical that politicians support a public education system for kids when they turn five, but not a public system for pre-schoolers.

"Politicians say that children are a family responsibility, but the family is a community responsibility," she says. "If you're supporting both women and men in the work force, then you support families too. People should be able to make that choice (of whether they will work)." …

In comparison, garbage collectors earned $728, auto mechanics $768, people involved in oil and gas extraction $1,626 and teachers $882. A small number of occupations commanded less money, and of those that did in the food and gambling industries there were also opportunities for tips….

Jane Hewes, who chairs the MacEwan program, said finding qualified staff is the main challenge if the province wants to create the 14,000 child-care spots it promises by 2011.

"We can create new spaces but we need to have people working in them, and we need to have qualified people in them ..." ….