Chris Lowrey
SHAWVILLE Sept. 13, 2017
Parents who banded together to fund a co-operative pre-kindergarten class at Dr. S.E. McDowell Elementary have been left in a lurch after being informed by the school board that the program will be changing.
For more than ten years, the program – which runs two days per week for a total of 56 days – has been funded by parents to the tune of about $600 per parent.

The parent’s contributions funded the program from September to March, at which point a provincial grant kicks in and covers the cost for the remainder of the year.
In past years, the parent’s co-op has paid for a teacher and an assistant that has an Early Childhood Education (ECE) certificate. “This year the [Western Quebec] School Board (WQSB) has said they reviewed the collective agreement and that the class has to be run by a certified teacher,” said parent Alina Séguin-Holmes. “So, you can imagine the costs now are astronomically large.”
“They’re requiring that we have a teacher with some level of seniority as well, which makes it even higher,” Séguin-Holmes said.
Parents will now have to pay $445 per day for the teacher. On top of that, they will also have to pay for an additional teacher for lunchtime supervision as well as cover the costs of 78 minutes of preparation time for the teacher each week.
According to Séguin-Holmes’ math, that works out to roughly $590 per day. This would cost parents around $2,500 for the year.
WQSB Director of Educational Services Stewart Aitken said the cost of the program hinges on the teacher that the principal chooses to hire. A teacher with more seniority is at a higher pay grade than one who just graduated from teacher’s college.
In Quebec, the salary range for teachers is anywhere from $35,000 to $80,000 depending on seniority. Going into this year, there were 16 parents signed up to contribute but that number has dipped to 14 after news of the changes came out. Although parents were informed of the changes in June, they weren’t given the full scope of the details until Sept. 8. Asked why parents had to wait until Sept. 8 to find out about the changes, McDowell’s Principal Anne Valcov chalked it up to staff being on summer vacation.
Valcov also said the reason for the changes was to bring McDowell into line with the rest of the schools in the WQSB.
“All of the other programs are run by teachers,” she said. “So, certainly within the collective agreement it should be a certified teacher. And who wouldn’t want a certified teacher to teach their child in pre-kindergarten?”
The fact that parents weren’t informed of the decision until Sept. 8 means that some who were banking on the junior kindergarten co-op program are now left with limited options for their children.
Asked if she thought the parents were given enough notice, Séguin-Holmes didn’t hesitate.
“Oh, absolutely not,” she said. “It’s absolutely too late because daycare starts Sept. 1. A large portion of those 16 parents don’t have daycare spots anymore.”
Séguin-Holmes said the changes came about when the class’s ECE assistant took time off for maternity leave last year. When the WQSB looked into a replacement, the teaching arrangement came to the school board’s attention.
“So the school board took a look at it and decided it now had to be a teacher,” Séguin-Holmes said. “We were perfectly happy with all the ECE’s that we’ve had. We don’t have a problem having to use a teacher but we do have a problem having to pay solo for these costs. They’re basically imposing this restriction on us but refusing to assist us in any way with paying for it.”
Séguin-Holmes said that parents were told in June that the school board would look into using the grant money that covers the program from March to June to cover the whole year. But parents were informed last week that the grant money was not an option.
Up until Sept. 8, when parents were informed of the changes, Séguin-Holmes said they knew that they had to have a teacher, but they didn’t know they would need two. They also knew the cost of the program would go up but were floored when the final figure came in.
“We knew it would probably cost a little more, but based on all of my dealings with the principal it looked like we would be [paying] around $1,000,” Séguin-Holmes said. “Our parents were willing to pay that, it was still reasonable.”
But the fact that McDowell has been singled out of all the schools in the Pontiac is a concern for Séguin-Holmes.
“A large part of the frustration too is that every other school in the Pontiac has a pre-kindergarten program that isn’t paid for by the parents,” she said. “Everybody else has teachers and everybody else is paid for by the board but us.”
The provincial government determines funding based on the education level of the student’s mother, among other factors.
“Basically, the education level of the mothers in the Shawville area and the McDowell catchment area is higher than in the surrounding areas,” Séguin-Holmes said. “Which supposedly suggests that our socio-economic stratus is higher and we don’t qualify for our pre-kindergarten to be paid for.”
“It’s definitely a source of frustration to feel like, out of the entire Pontiac region, our kids are the only kids that don’t get pre-kindergarten,” Séguin-Holmes said. “So you really have our kids at a disadvantage because of it.”