Inuksuk High School daycare to prioritize student parents starting January

Starting this January, the daycare at Inuksuk High School will start giving priority to the children of student parents, Doug Workman, the chair of the Iqaluit District Education Authority told Nunatsiaq News. (FILE PHOTO)

The children of student parents in Iqaluit will get the first crack at placements at the Inuksuk High School daycare, in the school semester that starts this January.

“Most of the daycare board members are educators, so they support students first,” Doug Workman, chair of the Iqaluit District Education Authority, said in a phone interview on Wednesday, Nov. 15.

“We want to solicit student parents out of school right now to register at the high school and daycare before January 21, in time for the winter session, so we can see how many spots are needed,” he said.

The Iqaluit DEA met with the board of Inuksuk Infant Development Centre on Nov. 5, after a student parent resorted to taking her infant child to class with her because he could not be placed at the high school daycare.

The daycare holds 24 spaces. But it said earlier that it can offer daycare spaces to the children of only five student parents, for financial reasons.

The children who currently take up the remain 19 spaces are children of either teachers or non-students.

The daycare’s board contended it couldn’t afford to open up more seats to the children of students, and that if it followed the DEA’s requests to do so, the daycare “may be forced to cease operations.”

The daycare’s board maintained that the children of Inuit students were not eligible for funding from Kakivak Association. Kakivak, however, has responded by saying that’s not true.

Shauna Beaton, the chair of the IIDC’s board, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But Workman said daycare board members have agreed to return to the daycare’s original mandate of providing childcare to students first, teachers second and non-students last.

This means that, depending on how many student parents sign up by January, the daycare will make space for them by bumping out the children of non-students.

The only limit now, when it comes to placing children at the daycare, will be their age, Workman said.

The IIDC currently does not offer spaces to infants under the age of 11 months, again for financial reasons and safety, as explained by Shauna Beaton, the chair of the IIDC, in a letter to the Iqaluit DEA.

Workman says he is working on seeing if that policy can be made a bit more flexible.

Right now, there are two students at Inuksuk High School who bring their children to school in what the school calls a “storefront program,” Workman said.

These teen moms do not study in regular classrooms. Instead, they teach themselves through online learning at the back of the sewing room, while their children stay in a playpen.

Nicole Alexander, 17, is one of the mothers in the storefront program at Inuksuk High School.

When her son Jake could not get in to the daycare, Alexander brought him with her to school during the first week of classes this September.

She was told she was not allowed to do this, for liability reasons, and then had to switch to the storefront program if she wanted to continue learning.

She was moved from a welding room, and then to a sewing room to continue her studies with her young son in tow.

“That is great news,” said Alexander’s mother, Erika. “All the students who currently have no childcare and want to attend high school will be so happy to hear the news, my daughter included.”