As parents begin clamouring to register their children at one of the schools that will offer full-day kindergarten next school year, one trustee is working to ensure that the neediest families have access to the program.
The province targeted low-income, high-need neighbourhoods when it finalized the list of schools that would offer the full-day program this fall, but Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee Rob Davis wants to go a step further.
In a letter to his board, he has called on staff to partner with Toronto Employment and Social Services in identifying families that might be able to come off welfare with access to the all-day option.
"A lack of childcare is an impediment to employment and training," said Mr. Davis, who was a member of the province's Social Benefits Tribunal before he became a trustee. "All-day learning provides a safety net, and I'm hoping we can turn that safety net into a trampoline for some families on Ontario Works benefits."
In the City of Toronto, which has tens of thousands of sole-support parents, about 100 schools will offer full-day kindergarten in the fall.
Elaine Baxter-Trahair, the city's general manager of children's services, said the municipality and the school boards are working together on the full-day program. She said her agency will likely be distributing the subsidies that will be given to low-income families to help pay for the associated after-school programs.
"The dialogue is pretty constant at this point, but it's still early days in terms of getting this system organized and up and running," she said.
The identification or recruitment of high-need families hadn't been discussed, she said, but she is open to a collaboration with the school boards.
"At this point, there's not much information, but as more information becomes available, we'll have more detailed discussions."
Mr. Davis said he had concerns that low-income families would fall behind their more affluent neighbours in the kindergarten registration lines.
"My fear is that many poor families, or working-poor families and families on benefits won't take advantage of an opportunity that middle-class parents will," he said. "We're talking potentially large numbers of people that could really get a hand up from this program."