School board trustee pitches plan to expand child care

A Vancouver school board trustee is proposing new child-care spaces be built in prefabricated modular buildings on school properties as a way to ease the city's long-running child care shortage.

Jennifer Reddy, a OneCity trustee, says there is an urgent need for licensed child-care spaces in Vancouver and the school board already has the land available.

“We already have the key asset — the land. The most difficult hurdle is already there for us,” she said. “It's up to us to unlock the potential of that investment for kids and hold it in trust.”

Despite funding from the province in 2019 and 2020 that has helped create child-care spaces at several sites, including the new Coal Harbour elementary school in downtown Vancouver, there's still a lack of spaces to meet demand.

Currently the school district has 3,718 available spaces for beforeand after-school care offered by 45 licensed operators. That's only enough to meet 17 per cent of the about 21,000 students from kindergarten to Grade 5 in the city, said Reddy.

“That's painfully low. That's barely hitting the mark of what's needed,” she said. “If we can triple it, add 8,000 more spaces to get to 12,000, that would be a good goal.”

Across the city, there is a shortfall of 15,000 child-care spaces for zero to 12-year-olds, according to a city document cited in Reddy's motion.

The motion directs district staff to investigate how to access provincial funds to build new child-care spaces in purpose-built, standalone modular buildings erected on empty land on district-owned properties.

The motion goes before the school board on Monday.