Filling a community’s need
Kinkora Early Learning Centre off to a flourishing start
KINKORA — An idea on the table for several years has become a reality in the Rural Municipality of Kinkora.
The Prince Edward Island community is now home to the Kinkora Early Learning Centre, and the early reviews indicate a win-win situation for all involved.
“The need is here, and it’s such an amazing service for the community,” said the centre’s director of programming, Megan Drummond, who pointed out Kinkora families previously had to travel outside the community for early learning facilities. “Now the children can come to the centre, and then go to school together. It’s amazing.”
The Town of Cornwall has a licensed program for beforeand-after-school activities for school-aged children, but Kinkora is the only P.E.I. municipality that owns and operates an all-day early learning centre.
The municipal council approved the Kinkora Early Learning Centre on Oct. 22, 2020, and it opened March 22, 2021.
The program features 22 children — all from the Kinkora area — and accommodates ages 12 months old to school-age entry.
“Usually, they would come to kindergarten without knowing any of their peers, or maybe they would know one from the community,” said Drummond. “This way, they are going to early-childhood together, pre-kindergarten and right into kindergarten, which is a nice transition.”
PROGRAMMING
Drummond said the centre offers a play-based program following the provincial earlyyears learning framework.
She said early childhood educators plan each day with consideration of the interests of the children.
“We have all open-ended toys out on the shelf so they can show us what they know through their play,” said Drummond. “We document that for the parents. We have an online app that we use to communicate with parents every day.”
FIRST DISCUSSED
The idea of an early learning facility in Kinkora came up some years ago. Anne Marie Shea participated in the initial conversations.
Fast forward to March 2020 when COVID-19 hit. Shea acknowledged she had some time on her hands and raised the topic again.
From there, conversations took place with theneducation minister Brad Trivers and Jamie Fox, MLA for Borden-Kinkora, and Matthew MacKay, MLA for Kensington-Malpeque.
“They agreed it was desperately needed, but (said) you are going to have a problem hiring staff,” said Shea, who knew a home had to be secured before staff could be hired.
Different options were looked at before Shea and Tina Harvey, chief administrative officer for the Rural Municipality of Kinkora, discussed the possibility of housing the program at Kinkora Place.
Shea said this would generate revenue for the village, and added a Department of Education survey in September last year confirmed Kinkora needed an early learning centre.
Conversations were also held with privately-owned early learning centres. Two critical things resonated from those conversations for Shea.
“Number 1, was how passionate they were about what they were doing,” she said. “Number 2, how stressful it was to be doing the payroll, changing light bulbs and delivering this early-learning centre curriculum. They validated the need to marry with the municipality.
“(The municipality is) already doing the payroll, paying the bills, somebody is changing the light bulbs. (We understood) if you could carve that piece off the position and lighten the load per se, it’s going to increase the quality of the day-to-day services.”
It’s been a perfect marriage for the municipality, said Harvey. She added the early learning centre brings in some revenue that was lost with bookings at Kinkora Place, such as weddings and community events, due to COVID-19.
“From the municipality’s point of view, we needed a source of revenue in addition to providing a service that was not dependent on large gatherings,” said Harvey. “As we know, we can’t depend on those anymore or know when we will be able to.
“It’s two-fold for us. We are providing a service, and, at this time, we have revenue coming in and revenue going out.”
NEED
The response to applications indicated the need for this program. There were 52 kids, including 17 infants, on the waitlist after the first 48 hours, noted Drummond.
“When we put up our waitlist online, there were a lot of families from the Kinkora area that were on our waitlist,” said Harvey. “That, again, reinforced the fact that we are providing services to our residents, and, in addition to that, the number of people on our waitlist was mindblowing.”
The initial intent was not to include infants in the program.
Numbers changed that. “The reason behind not starting with infants is you pay out $168 a day for staff for three infants, and you take in $96,” said Harvey. “But the need was there from our community, so we did start with three infants.”
Drummond, Harvey and Shea described the community support for the early learning centre as incredible. Drummond pointed out 75 per cent of the equipment has been donated by community members.
“The early-childcare education is one of the social determinants for a healthy, sustainable community,” said Shea.