Submission #2502

For 30 years, I’ve worked in early childhood education on Prince Edward Island—and I’ve seen firsthand how far we’ve come.
Our province has worked incredibly hard for educators, children, and families. From building a strong early learning system, to implementing a structured wage grid, to moving toward $10-a-day childcare—we are heading in the right direction. PEI is becoming an incredible place to raise children, and that matters.
I am truly grateful for that progress.
But that quality didn’t happen by accident.
It was built on pedagogical support—the people who help educators with documentation, inclusion, planning, and navigating increasingly complex needs in our classrooms.
Without that support, things don’t just get harder—they change:
• Inclusion becomes more difficult
• Educators burn out faster
• Documentation and programming suffer
• Overall quality declines
Wages matter. Cost-of-living support matters. And those steps are appreciated.
But strong systems are not sustained by wages alone—they are sustained by the supports behind the educators doing the work every day.
My concern is simple: if we lose pedagogical support, we risk losing the very quality that has made PEI a leader.
We’ve come so far. We are on the right path , let’s think about this
I just hope we continue to protect what helped us get to where we are