Parents from Burnaby and New Westminster are adding their voices to a call for changes to B.C.’s gradual approach to kindergarten entry.
All of which leaves parents scrambling to figure out child care — and that’s where they’d like to see things change. Gradual schedules pose challenges for parents The petition resonates with Stoney Creek Elementary parent Henning White. His family has been able to make it work, White notes. His wife has flex time that she used to cover the first week; White runs his own engineering business out of his home, so he was able to reschedule clients to clear the second week.
“There’s a lot of ‘What do I do, how do I find child care, how do I make this work?’" she said. “That question comes up a lot: ‘I can’t make it work; do I have to go?’” “There’s no one out there offering child care the way that you need it during gradual entry,” she said. “People rely on family, friends — you double-team, tap-in, tap-out child care with a friend. It’s a burden to put all these pieces in place.”