Excerpts
Parents who publicly criticized a High Park daycare for pulling out of the national subsidy program say they are not being offered their old spots back now that the daycare has reversed its decision.
The parents have contacted Sunnyside Day Care, a for-profit business run by Holton Hunter and John McCallum, and asked to re-enrol their children, but they have so far been met with silence. They believe they are being punished for speaking out in the media.
“I’m absolutely enraged,” said Melissa Bruno, who previously spoke to the Star and other media outlets about Sunnyside’s initial decision. Bruno said it was disappointing that the daycare’s leadership seemed to be targeting her and other parents “simply because we called them out on how their ill-informed decision-making hurt the very community they once relied on to open up their business in the first place.”
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Martha Friendly, one of Canada’s leading child-care researchers and an advocate for non-profits, said the conflict at Sunnyside illustrates one of the problems with relying on private businesses to deliver a primarily publicly funded social program.
Child care is shifting toward being a public service, she said, and being a public service demands more transparency and openness than is required of a private business.