Daycare moving into St Malo School

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This article was published 20/05/2024 (365 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

St Malo School’s expansion is set to open this month, and there will soon be some new tiny occupants joining the kindergarten to Grade 8 students after two childcare providers were approved to move in by the school board.

Garderie de Bambins Coop and Les P’tits Papillons will be taking up the available space in the school. The co-op will transfer 25 students for its before and after school program to the school. Les P’tits Papillon will move its nursery program to the school during the school day.

The two currently share a space in town that requires coordination, with the nursery using the space during the school day and students bused to and from the school.

“There’s a slight joy for parents when you can drop your kids off once and you know they’re there for the whole day,” said Red River Valley School Division (RRVSD) board chair Heather Poirier.

She added that this move will make more room in the co-op’s current building for preschoolers.

The school board made the decision at its May 1 board meeting after hearing presentations from the childcare providers and Jolys Regional Library. The library lost its St Malo school space in August 2022 when it was needed for classes.

There was no plan from the Province or the school division to have extra space in a school with growing enrolment when it was put on the list for expansion in 2016 and ground was broken in April 2022.

“Our responsibility is K to 12,” said Poirier.

But she added that the newest schools are considering things like daycare space when building now, and with an extra room available it made sense to have childcare in it.

“There’s a daycare crisis in Manitoba – in Canada in general – where there’s just not enough spaces for the amount of kids. I think that any opportunity that we have where we can kind of support that, and it works for us, we can have the space and we can make it work, then we will,” said Poirier.

While there is only one extra room, the before and after school kids will not be confined just to that space.

“I believe it’s going to be more mobile, so essentially they’ll use for example gym space or another classroom because it would just be those before and after school hours,” explained Poirier.

She did point out that the space is not a long-term lease. Much like with the library, it could eventually be needed for instructional space as St Malo grows.

“Our primary focus is always going to be on what will fit the kids. If we need the space for classrooms or whatever may be the case, like an art room or bathroom, it’s obviously something we need to look at because we need to accommodate our needs first,” said Poirier.

The new expansion also means more space for the rest of the community, too.

“They have a beautiful new gym that the community will be able to use,” said Poirier.

Any cost to use school space during evenings or weekends is meant to be minimal and is to cover janitorial work to keep it open, for example $40 per hour for the gym. Community use details and application forms to be brought to principals for renting school spaces are available online at rrvsd.ca under the Our Community tab.