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Quality child care is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
That is especially true for parents who are working to build better lives by getting an education. If we remove their access to quality care and education for their youngsters, we also take away access to education for parent students. Ultimately, society will pay the cost.
Camosun College tries to defend its plans to close campus day cares by using words like "subsidies." But funding for early childhood education isn't a subsidy. It is an investment in the future of our province.
As a taxpayer, I expect governments and their appointed boards to wisely manage that investment. Kicking kids out of their day care and forcing their parents out of school isn't the way to do it.
Camosun child-care services are already accounted for in the college's 2004/05 budget.
Day care doors should stay open for the kids. And over the next year, the adults in charge should work together to find a way to keep the doors permanently open.
- reprinted from the Times-Colonist