Submission #2280

The recent budget cuts to the ECE sector feel like a significant step backwards.
Over the past few years, centres across PEI have stepped up to address long waiting lists. We’ve expanded, opened new centres, and supported our staff in upgrading their certifications—even when it meant they stepped away from our programs temporarily.
At the same time, we’ve continued to meet and exceed expectations: communicating with families, documenting children’s learning, hosting parent-teacher interviews, and creating meaningful opportunities for family engagement. We’ve made learning visible, stayed active in our communities, and fully committed to the AQI (Assessment for Quality Improvement) process—investing time, energy, and resources into strengthening our environments, programming, relationships, and overall quality.
A key part of making all of this possible has been the support of our Pedagogical Support staff.
Megan Miller and Anne Miller share the limited hours allocated to our centre, yet the mentorship, guidance, and expertise they provide have had an immeasurable impact on our team. Their experience and specialized training are deeply valued—not only by our educators, but by the families and community we serve.
PEI’s Early Childhood system has become the envy of provinces across Canada. We’ve even heard from educators in other provinces and in the United States about how much they admire the pedagogical support model our centres have access to. It raises a difficult question: why would we consider cutting services that have proven to be so valuable to our littlest citizens?
Losing hours in these positions is not just a reduction in staffing—it is a loss in quality, in support, and in our ability to continue meeting the high standards we’ve worked so hard to build at EKELA.