Childcare Centre At Hamber Opens April 1
Photo Credit: Evîn Jaaf
Hamber’s fourth floor will serve as a childcare centre for children aged 0 to 5, as part of a joint effort between the Vancouver School Board (VSB) and the City of Vancouver.
While the VSB provides space and cleaning services, the city has funded the construction costs and planned the traffic flow in the parking lot.
Set to officially open on April 1, the daycare will bring changes to traffic patterns, particularly near Hamber’s east entrance, which will become the designated pickup and drop-off area for the childcare centre.
According to Mr. N. Despotakis (Administration), who is Hamber’s liaison with the daycare, many students have been loitering around the east school entrance plaza after school. “It's going to take some teaching to get everyone not to stand in the designated parking spots and to walk around the bike barn to get to the east side of the property to the south sidewalk and to stay out of harm's way,” said Mr. Despotakis. “To keep everyone safe we will have the same flaggers that were here at the beginning of the school year for another two weeks to help us with traffic flow in the parking lot when the daycare opens.”
Still, Mr. Despotakis is concerned over safety and traffic flow when daycare parents are dropping off their children adjacent to the building and next to the crosswalk. “I think I'll be standing outside a lot, starting in April. It's a good thing it will be spring!” he said. “Our goal is to teach their parents, our parents and our staff how to stay safe — keeping everyone safe in the parking lot is my number one [priority].”
To access the Childcare facility, the families of children attending will receive fobs to enter the daycare’s ground-floor lobby and to use the shared elevator to the 4th floor. The fobs have been programmed and will not allow access to the rest of the school.
Having a daycare easily accessible to Hamber students may also benefit future students who are taking childcare classes and looking for volunteer or work experience. “[The daycare is] open and interested in having volunteers from our school to go upstairs and help. [Potentially] kids from the childcare classes or any other students that are thinking of early childhood education may be involved,” Mr. Despotakis said. “We can connect students with [the daycare staff] upstairs so they can do work experience hours right in our school.”
When asked if students and staff on the third floor need to worry about noise issues, Mr. Despotakis emphasized that it was not a concern. “There's actually a fire break between the school and the daycare, so it's a larger distance between the 4th and 3rd floors. There should be nothing heard from upstairs.”
The childcare centre will be operated by the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House. The non-profit organization plans to transfer current children and staff from their existing facility and add more children and staff to the new space at Hamber. In total, the new centre has the capacity for 69 children and 17 staff. The VSB will support operations by providing custodial staff for the daycare, including during spring, summer, and winter breaks.
We look forward to the opening of the Childcare Centre and we wish them well.