Trustees call consultation timeline flawed
Cariboo Press - Kelowna Capital News
July 3, 2008
By: Adrian Nieoczym

The provincial government's consultation process on the feasibility of full-day kindergarten for five-year-olds and optional full-day kindergarten for three and four-year-olds, is drawing concern from local educators.

… "That is the work that the Early Childhood Learning Agency is exploring-what are the potential options for our earliest learners, what do families want and what are the logistical and cost implications."

Trustees on the Central Okanagan Board of Education received their questionnaires just before their last meeting on June 25, said board chairwoman Moyra Baxter.

"The timelines are really just awful," she added.

"We didn't really have any time to spend on it as a board."

She said having such a short consultation process that coincides with the start of summer holidays makes it difficult to provide feedback.

Linda McKinlay, an early childhood education instructor at Okanagan College, is also concerned about the compressed consultation process. "A lot of institutions that teach early childhood education are now running around trying to see how they could have an opportunity to give some good consultative advice, " she said,

McKinlay's fear is that the process will be inadequate for what could turn out to be a massive overhaul of how young children are educated and cared for.

She said the government should bring educators together from both the kindergarten to Grade 12 system and the ECE system, which includes professionals working in daycare centres, family child care, preschools and out- of-school care programs.

"The whole level of consultation should be going to a place of sitting down at a table and working through what the ramifications are. Obviously the short- and long-term consequences are huge," she said.

McKinlay said early kindergarten programs would dramatically change the culture of day care and ECE and there are questions about what the curriculum would look like. "And can a three- or four-year-old really stay in that kind of a program for a full day without sheer exhaustion?" She also wonders who could end up teaching any new kindergarten programs.

OC currently teaches early childhood educators to work in licensed child care and preschool facilities.

McKinlay said these professionals are trained in what's developmentally appropriate learning for young children.

But that doesn't mean she wants to keep the status quo. "It's always good to have change. You don't want things to stay the same. Child care has required more support from government," she said.

"Let's make sure it's an educated change and let's make sure we talk to the people who know what they're doing."

One concern for the school district is where it would house new kindergarten programs. Over the last 10 years, the district has been "quite ruthless about amalgamating and closing schools," in response to declining enrolment and population shifts, said Baxter….