Starting this September, parents in the Hanover School Division will have a new childcare option. The school division is partnering with Right at School, a leading before- and afterschool programming provider, to meet the needs of working families in several of its communities. The programs will begin this fall in Niverville and Steinbach, as well as in several other towns throughout the division, as long as there is sufficient interest.
“We think we have found something that could be really awesome, particularly for [Niverville], but also for certain other communities as well,” says Randy Dueck, Superintendent of the Hanover School Division. “We think Right at School could really help to meet the need.”
Right at School, founded in 2011 in Evanston, Illinois, is an American company that is recently making in-roads into the Canadian market. They offered their first Canadian programs last year, in the Pembina Trails School Division in Winnipeg.
“There’s a really good opportunity here, there’s a need here in this community, and we believe that Right at School can help you along with that need,” says Dueck.
Childcare Dilemma
Niverville, with a growing population of young families and commuters, is not alone in its need for more childcare options.
“When I decided to move to Niverville from Winnipeg, I kept hearing that it was impossible to get any childcare in this growing community,” says Claudia Jofre, a mother of two who has lived in Niverville for five years. “I called the licensed daycare to find out how long the wait list was. They said it would be a few years’ wait. I couldn’t wait a few years!”
At first, Jofre decided to leave both of her kids in the private school they had been attending in Winnipeg, where they had access to before- and afterschool programs in their classrooms.
“It was great,” Jofre says. “It was one drop-off and one pickup. We did this for four years. [But] living in Niverville while working and going to school in Winnipeg definitely took a toll on the kids and myself. Being gone for 11 hours during the week was a bit much for them. They also did not make any friends in the community.”
She eventually decided to enroll her kids in the Niverville school system and look for private home daycares, but everyone she contacted was full and had long wait lists. “The desperation is so high for parents that many home daycares are unlicensed, charging double the price, and [offering] limited hours and no childcare during school in-services or school holidays. All this plus no receipts for payments given. I couldn’t deduct childcare payments. But it was time to start living in this community.”
Unfortunately, she never did receive a phone call letting her know that a space had opened in Niverville’s licensed daycare.
Enter Right at School
Julie Lyon, Senior Director of School Partnerships for Right at School, and Grace Anastasiadis, Manitoba Area Manager, made presentations to parents in Steinbach on Tuesday, May 22 and in Niverville on Wednesday, May 23. Although Right at School offers a range of programs, this first year they will begin in Hanover with afterschool programming, which begins at the end of the school day and lasts until 6:00 p.m.
“I’m a working mom,” says Lyon. “I have a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old and my work productivity goes down around three o’clock when I start thinking, where are my kids? Are they going home with the babysitter? Are they staying in school for afterschool programs? My work productivity starts to go down because I start to worry. We want to take that [burden] off of you if you’re working families, or even if you’re not working families, to say, ‘It’s okay to have my child at school until six o’clock. Because they’re going to be engaged, they’re going to be healthy, and they’re going to be doing fitness.’”
Lyon says the founder of Right at School, Dr. Mark Rothchild, started the program after seeing a need in urban school districts for meaningful, enriching afterschool programs.
“He walked into an afterschool program that his child was in, saw his child eating a bag of Doritos and watching TV and said, ‘You know what? That’s enough. We have to do better for our kids,’” says Lyon. “So here we are, almost eight years later. We are holding 20,000 children in before- and afterschool programs and recess programs across North America.”
The company’s mission is to inspire a love of learning, support schools, and give people peace of mind. Their four core values are being mission-led, innovation-driven, locally inspired, and efficiency-obsessed.
Their emphasis on local means that their programs are customizable from school to school, district to district. They hire locally, from nearby colleges and universities, and also prioritize bringing in staff who may already work in the school, such as educational aids who have preexisting connections with the children. And to ensure that kids get the attention they need, the maximum ratio of kids to staff members is 15 to one.
To accommodate the needs of working families, Right at School offers discounts for siblings and low-income families.
“That’s really important to us,” says Lyon. “We want every child to be able to utilize Right at School. It doesn’t matter about cost. We want to say, how can we help?”
Their pricing is flexible. Parents can sign their kids up for anywhere from one day per week to five days per week, depending on the need, and they allow drop-ins, as long as there’s a half-day of notice. Ten-visit punch cards are also available. There’s no long-term commission, and it’s all based on rolling admission that can change month to month.
Although each school’s program schedule is bound to be different, Right at School’s afterschool program follows a loose guideline. The key is that the children go back and forth between more sedentary activities and active activities.
“The children will come to the afterschool program, have a healthy snack with us, peanut-free, and then they’re moving into town hall, which is really about a five minute get-together where we’re getting the kids excited for the day,” says Lyon of the daily schedule. “We’re talking about the transition from the school day into the afterschool program and we’re doing cheers, so you may see the kids singing or dancing and getting excited, where they’re burning energy off from the day. We know kids have been sitting, so we have very experiential, hands-on, query-based learning.”
This includes a lot of time outdoors and working on projects that involve exercise, engineering, math, and science, all in the guise of having as much fun as possible. The curriculum is written by educational experts, and Lyon calls it “multisensory, multi-intelligence, and multicultural.” Multi-intelligence means that the programming will appeal to learners of all ages. The curriculum is also changing all the time, so it won’t get stale for kids who return year after year.
Another goal is to ensure that kids are able to get their homework finished before being picked up by their parents, to maximize quality time in the evenings.
“At six o’clock, it’s family time,” Lyon points out. “I’m that parent. I pick my kids up at six o’clock, I want to go home, cook dinner, and have family time. Often homework time can get frustrating, and as parents we don’t often know how to do homework with our children these days. So we want to make sure that your children are going home with their homework completed.”
Grace Anastasiadis, who oversees all the programs in Manitoba, cites the program’s success in Pembina Trails last year. In various units, kids made famous monuments out of Legos, treehouses out of pipe-cleaners, shoes out of newspapers, and dresses out of garbage bags.
“We also drove an initiative with our Cool to Be Kind challenge, and every school did something different,” says Anastasiadis. “One school made bookmarks for their library and they would have just different inspirational quotes that said ‘You Matter,’ ‘You Are Amazing,’ ‘You’re Brilliant,’ and then they took those bookmarks and hid them in the library. Another one that they did is a program where they sent Christmas cards to sick children. That was just a locally inspired initiative. We did so many things.”
The Pembina Trails program also included a leadership track, which involved the children writing out applications, doing an interview with staff, and then taking on leadership roles, whether that meant setting up snacks, being a line leader, setting up curriculum supplies, or an older child reading books to younger children.
Registration Drive
Registration for Right at School opened on Thursday, May 24. Parents can register at the Hanover School Division website (see below). There is no deadline for fall registration, although parents are encouraged to register their children before June 30 if possible. The school division notes that early registration will help them to determine which sites in the division are viable, since there must be a minimum daily average of 15 students in the program per day.
“From what I understand, the Right at School program is amazing and exactly what I as a parent would want for my child,” says Jofre. “Fitness activities, a daily curriculum on themes, and homework help is an added bonus!”
Jofre is strongly considering enrolling her kids, and thinks the program is a good fit for Niverville, complementing the daycare options that are already available and making them more accessible.
“My thought is that this program is what the families of Niverville desperately need,” she says. “Niverville is a great community, a place where you can still see kids playing outside, get to know your neighbours, and find affordable housing. Before- and afterschool has been a struggle for many families, but we are moving in the right direction with programs like these.”
