The New Brunswick government will provide financial relief to early childhood educators to offset the cost of the $1.00 per hour minimum wage increase happening on April 1. it is also reviewing further funding for October when minimum wage increases yet again by the same amount.
In total, New Brunswick will spend $700,000 to help operators running daycares for children ages 0-5. These centres receive regular government funding and are not allowed to raise parent fees.
But there is a large group of operators who are left out of that $700,000 pot of money: operators who run after-school programs for children older than five.
In an email, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development said several factors went into the decision to leave after-school programs out of the new funding. Unlike pre-school daycares, these programs can raise parent fees, for example.
“Operators of after-school programs for children aged five and older are less impacted by the increases in minimum wage than operators of preschool programs,” reads the email. “That’s because after-school programs generally need less staff to operate due to their educator-per-child ratio requirement.”
“After-school programs are also not required to follow the Low-Fee Policy controlled through the Market Fee Threshold. Therefore operators have more flexibility to increase parent fees, if they so choose.”
But the last thing after-school educators want to do is ask parents to pay more, especially since many families struggle to pay for daycare already.
One organization speaking out is BGC Riverview (formally known as the Boys and Girls Club). The organization has after-school programs where it serves as many as 500 kids a week.
Most of its programs come free of charge, thanks to funding and generous donors. The one program where it must collect parent fees is its after-school daycare that holds 60 spaces.
Lynda Carey, executive director of BGC Riverview, says the minimum wage increases happening in April and October will add $20,000 to the annual budget. For a major corporation that may not be much but for a small nonprofit with 15 staff, it’s a major hurdle.
“If we can’t find a way to fundraise that $20,000 difference, we may have to look at increasing the costs of daycare, something we do not want to do,” said Carey.
The Riverview director notes that this minimum wage increase isn’t happening in a vacuum. Non-profits, just like businesses, are juggling fixed costs at a time of high inflation.
Fuel prices have been a major stress for BGC. The organization has three large vehicles that pick up children after school. On top of that, BGC feeds hundreds of kids through its school breakfast program.
“Between the breakfast programs and snack programs that we have here, we’re starting to borrow from programming budgets to pay for the food budget,” said Carey.
“We’re kind of doing a dance right now. We have to figure out not only how we’re going to manage this year but how we’re going to manage in perpetuity.”
To make things harder, Carey has noticed donations aren’t coming in like they used to. The economic effects of Covid have many tightening how much they give to charities.
“In 2020, when covid first hit, donations and support from the community were astounding and very humbling,” recounted Carey.
“But in 2021, everyone else started feeling the pinch too and donations started to dry up. It became harder for us to make ends meet. We have some that have continued their support but have reduced the amount they are able to support.”
Private operators are also trying to figure out how to recoup higher labour costs without passing the buck to parents.
Go-Go Group Inc, located in Fredericton, offers programming for hundreds of pre-school and after-school aged children. Out of nearly 900 kids who attend Go-Go, 750 fall into the after-school age groups.
Therefore, most of Go-Go’s 124 staff won’t be eligible for the new provincial minimum wage funding. Owner Kara Angus (Hachey) says she has met with a handful of other operators to discuss solutions. She said she hasn’t crunched the numbers yet to figure out how much her budget will grow due to the minimum wage increases.
Angus says she is grateful the government is providing more funding for pre-school programs, but worries about parents paying more for the afterschool programs.
“My worry is that the increase in minimum wage costs will fall on the backs of parents. It is in contradiction of the entire buzz around the Canada-wide plan,” says Angus.
“Unless these operators have a hidden stash tucked away somewhere to accommodate this it will likely end up in after-school operators increasing their fees.”
Despite her concerns, Angus agrees that early childhood educators deserve to make more than they’re currently making in New Brunswick.
“I am all in full support of our educators and our staff increasing their salaries. This is a tough industry; they are exceptionally hard and wonderful workers, and they deserve everything they can get.”
“it’s not even timely, it’s overdue.”
Dr.Erin Schryer, owner and operator of Origins, is breathing a sigh of relief after the funding was announced. April 1 was fast approaching before the government made its $700,000 funding announcement.
Origins is responsible for 473 children across four centres in Saint John and Quispamsis and employs 120 staff. While it has after-school programing, most of Origins’ costs are in the 0-5 age group.
Before the province announced the new minimum wage funding, Schryer calculated that the collective $2 per hour minimum wage hike in 2022 would cost Origins an extra $500,000 a year.
There’s still some concern that Origins might have to float $250,000 in the province doesn’t provide a second round of minimum wage funding in October. But she is cautiously optimistic the province won’t leave pre-school operators high and dry.
As Schryer’s numbers demonstrate, operators rely heavily on government funding, so parents are saddled with enormous daycare fees.
“Parent fees don’t cover what good early childhood educators should make,” said Schryer on the need for more funding. “And we need our early childhood educators to make even more.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle Today reporter, an Acadia Broadcasting content sharing partner.
