Spring Creek daycare to close its doors: Centre not sustainable after loss of infant programs in November
Whistler Pique
2009-02-24
By Andrew Mitchell

The Spring Creek Campus of the Whistler Children’s Centre will be closing its doors to all programs Friday, Feb. 27 as a cost-cutting measure.

The infant toddler programs that previously ran at capacity were closed on Nov. 28 because of lack of staff with provincial qualifications.

Enrolment in the centre’s remaining programs, for children age 3-5, is currently down as those kids have enrolled in ski school and other programs for the winter.

As a result, the centre has been losing money for several months. The Whistler Children’s Centre (WCC) kept the programs running as a service to local parents, and in the hope that they would find teachers with the appropriate infant toddler and Early Childhood Educator qualifications to restart programs for kids aged three months to three years.

Now, the WCC has applied to the Resort Municipality of Whistler for the ability to sublet the space to another tenant while they look at other options…..

Johnson has been working with the impacted families the past week, and was able to guarantee at least one day a week for each child at the WCC’s Nesters location. She says it was the best they could do in the situation.

“It’s still kind of patchy care for some (families), some got a couple of days less than they were relying on before,” she said. “And that doesn’t include children that would be re-enrolling after ski school.”

Johnson says the financial losses were significant and put the WCC in jeopardy. Even at capacity, and with fees about to increase in the spring, Spring Creek may not be viable without another source of funding.

“We were running at half capacity, and to not lose money we would need that centre full,” she said. “But even the design of the building is not accommodating... In (two of the) classrooms for the older children there is a certain square foot allowance that only allows for 22 children and we need children’s rooms at 25 to staff them properly and not have losses.

“Obviously we’re looking at what we can do with it at this time… Maybe moving forward in the future we can redesign the building to open classrooms at full capacity and work for us again, but there are a lot of contributing factors and it really depends on what happens in the future.”

Ryan Donohue, chair of the WCC parent committee, has had to make a lot of changes recently. When the infant programs at Spring Creek closed in November he was forced to divide his daughter’s time between home care and Nesters before joining Nesters full-time. Now, with the older programs going, his son will move to Nesters as well.

He has seniority with the program and his son was able to get all the days they needed.

“He was definitely one of the lucky ones to get those spots, but some parents will not get the spots they need,” said Donohue….

The parent committee is looking at several options to reopen Spring Creek and working with different groups in the community. “Unfortunately we’re going to see that building sit empty until a solution can be found for setting up the centre again,” said Donohue. “That’s not going to happen until A) we get more qualified staff to staff (infant) programs, or B) we bring enrolment and revenue up to make it financially viable to run the centre.”…