Empty classes filling up with daycare kids
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times
December 27, 2008 
By: Maria Rantanen

….The school district has opened up empty classrooms for daycares with standard rents approved by the board of education and currently have 19 rooms in 13 schools dedicated to daycare.

Last April, room rentals were set at $10,500 per year, which district staff said was one of the lowest rates in the Lower Mainland.

…The school district had about 90 empty classrooms in its elementary school last year and the ministry of education was pressuring the district to close schools before new ones could be built in east Maple Ridge where schools were overcrowded.

However, school districts across the province have been asking the ministry for about a year whether classrooms used by daycares are considered empty but the school district has received no definitive word, according to SD42 secretary-treasurer Don Woytowich. However, he added he's expecting some answer by the fall.

…But daycare is not cheap.

One family at her Port Moody daycare decided to up and move to Quebec when they started expecting their second child, enticed by the $7/day daycare in that province….