A $14.7-million expansion of a child-care centre at North Island College’s Courtenay campus won’t just include 75 new spaces for children — it will have more classrooms to train early childhood educators.
The non-profit Beaufort Children’s Centre, created in 1994, primarily serves students, staff and faculty at the college.
Kathleen Haggith, dean of the college’s faculty of health and human services, said the expansion will address demand for both child-care spaces and providers in one place.
The expanded space will include two classrooms so the college can train 48 more full-time students and 20 more part-time students in early childhood education.
“We’ve heard from providers that one of the biggest barriers to opening more spaces is finding qualified early childhood educators to work in the centres,” Haggith said in a statement.
The 75 new licensed childcare spaces provided as part of the expansion, funded by the province, include 12 infant-toddler spaces, 46 spaces for children ages three to five, and 17 spaces for school-age kids.
The college, which is running a projected deficit of $609,000, is spending $1.58 million to hire new faculty and staff, including in its early childhood education program, according to a board of governors report.
Construction of the expansion is expected to start in the spring. The child-care centre is expected to continue operating throughout the work.
The project is funded by three partners: $8 million from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Futures Skills, $6.2 million from the Ministry of Education and Child Care, and $500,000 from North Island College itself. The initial plans for the expansion were drawn up by the Victoria-based Stantec Architecture Ltd.
The college says the goal is to have the project completed at the same time as its first-ever student housing project at the Courtenay campus, set to be finished by the fall of 2025. Twenty suites in the student housing facility will be specifically designed for families.
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