Good morning.
I would like to thank the Committee for meeting with us today to take stock of one of the most important issues in the development of Alberta's French-language communities: early childhood. My name is Nathalie Lachance, and I am president of the Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord.
I would also like to recognize that we are in Treaty No. 6 territory, as well in Métis Nation of Alberta territory.
We are one of the province's four French-language school boards; close to 3,400 students attend our 19 schools. The development of French-language schools is the logical result of the development of structures and programs for early childhood. This period in a child's life is not only critical to their development, it also represents a key interval for them to learn and retain the French language. Moreover, this period plays an essential role in building the child's identity and their sense of community belonging. This is why school boards have adopted policies that aim to support programs such as preschool education in their schools.
We want to inform you of three challenges which seem to be recurrent in the delivery of early childhood services to communities served by our school board.
First, there is no guaranteed funding to ensure the stability and the harmonization of service delivery models for early childhood. In our province, the existence of a lot of French-language early childhood services is a near miracle. These services are the result of the commitment and goodwill of volunteer parents, the sponsorship of projects by associations that often have insufficient resources, and support from schools.
French-language schools are often gathering places for francophone families. These centres relay both language and culture to our youth, and organize activities around building their identity. It then seems normal to expect these minority schools to be a lever for the delivery of early childhood services. In some of our communities, there is pressure to include preschool programs—the fate of which is often uncertain—in the French-language education systems. The end result is a fragmented service delivery model. For example, in some cases, committees made up of parents use our schools' classrooms to set up preschools, whereas, in other cases, it is up to the school boards to manage the delivery of the preschool program. The fragility of the services is putting children at risk before they begin their schooling.
Second, we deplore the lack of appropriate spaces. We regularly meet with provincial government officials to bring attention to our enormous infrastructure deficit. You can imagine that adding preschools and daycares to our schools is challenging in terms of space. Unlike all the province's English-speaking families, French-speaking families only have access to a few services. Francophone parents work and their increasing needs for early childhood services—in French—represent a challenge with regard to accessibility and proximity. In some rural communities, spaces are available, but there is a lack of personnel, whereas, in urban communities, there are not enough spaces to meet the demand. Families frequently see their identity and culture fade away when they cannot easily access affordable—something of concern to young families—and quality services offered in French.
French-language schools often face demand for spaces. Since spaces reserved for early childhood education in schools are generally more affordable, it becomes pragmatic, from an organizational point of view, and beneficial to include early childhood spaces in French-language schools. The benefit for parents transcends the aspects of identity building and consolidating French-language services. However, this solution promises equally uncertain results, because the spaces dedicated to early childhood education programs are rare, and cannot be guaranteed long term.
The increase in enrolment in many of our schools adds a level of fragility to the use of spaces for early childhood education. We face challenges related to the spaces needed for our pupils' schooling, and this leads to the troubling solution of having to ask daycare services to leave our schools—and this breaks our hearts. You can understand what repercussions this will have later on.
We measure the scope of the challenge related to the spaces and access to early childhood services every year, and preschoolers are only a segment of the children who are signed up for kindergarten in our schools. If we had more spaces reserved for early childhood programs, we could prepare our French-language schools to welcome larger cohorts of children.
The third challenge is the shortage of qualified personnel to meet our needs. The school boards are able to partly support the programs thanks to funding allocated in two specific areas: francization and support for special needs. However, these support programs only affect a portion of preschoolers. Consequently, the money available to support the school boards' early childhood education programs does not necessarily provide complete funding for the programs.
Recruiting qualified teachers to deliver the programs is as much of a challenge as retaining them. Furthermore, we are also faced with a shortage of qualified personnel in fields such as speech therapy and occupational therapy.
Thank you.