Staffing shortages leave new N.S. child care classrooms sitting empty
A CBC News report on July 16 found that a newly built child care centre in Bridgewater, N.S., has two classrooms with room for 34 children sitting empty because it cannot find qualified staff — it needs five more early childhood educators to operate at full capacity. Operators in small Nova Scotia communities point to the high cost of living and limited public transportation as barriers to recruitment, and say they routinely have to close rooms when a single educator is away because they are only just meeting required ECE-to-child ratios. It is a familiar picture across the country: the spaces exist, but the workforce to open them does not yet.
Source: CBC NEWS – Staffing challenges limit access to child care in some small N.S. communities
