Alberta’s preschools struggling because of funding gap, advocates say

Alberta’s preschools struggling because of funding gap, advocates say

Province’s current grant setup makes daycares more enticing, preschool owner says

Advocates say families in Alberta could be at risk of losing access to licensed preschool programs if the province’s current child care funding model remains unchanged.

In a survey by the Association of Canadian Early Learning Programs (ACE), a majority of preschool operators in Alberta who responded said they anticipate closing their school before or during the upcoming school year.

The preliminary results, which may not reflect the entire preschool sector, also showed a majority of respondents report that they were seeing declining enrolment.

“I feel frustrated,” said Krystal Churcher, a Fort McMurray preschool owner and the chair of ACE.

“I feel really saddened for the communities that rely on these preschool programs. … A lot of us have spent decades building these programs for our communities, investing our savings and time to make sure that families have access to a preschool option for care.”

Churcher said she thinks the issue is with the province’s child care affordability grant.

The current model offers full-time and part-time funding to daycare programs at a federal cap of $15 a day for parents, totalling $326.25 a month for full-time attendance. Licensed preschools are permitted to set their own fees without restrictions, often in the range of around $160 to $300 a month depending on the age of the child and their part-time attendance.

Parents can access a discount on those fees of up to $100 a month per enrolled child.

While preschools offer part-time care services up to four hours a day for a limited age range of children, daycares offer extended hours for children of varying ages.

This funding discrepancy has created a system that favours one licensed model over the other, said Churcher, incentivizing parents to choose daycare programs over preschools due to lower fees.

Churcher said preschool programs tend to offer more structured learning curriculums meant to prepare children for entering the classroom.

While preschools have the choice to increase their fees, without parent demand for preschool programming, increasing fees does nothing to attract enrolment, said Churcher.

“Why are part-time programs being funded for families in one model of child care under a daycare licence when a part-time program in a preschool is not?” she said.

Preschools and daycare programs in Alberta are equally licensed under the Early Learning and Child Care Act and both models count towards Alberta’s space targets under the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements.

Alissa Donaldson, executive director of North Glenora Playschool, said that of the three different preschools she’s run in the last nine years, North Glenora Playschool is the last one left.

“We're at a place right now where we're looking at doing everything we absolutely can to run for another year,” she said. “It's a sad thing for us because we've been in operation for so long. … We have amazing teachers. We have three sets of siblings come through our program.

"We have this legacy program and it's just hard to see it go.”

When the child care affordability grant came into effect in April 2025, it replaced a program that provided subsidies for low-income families with infants up to children of kindergarten age. Its replacement meant families, no matter what income background, paid a flat fee of $15 a day for their child care.

Families reeling after Alberta ends child-care subsidy

“Removing the provincial subsidy program was a really big hit to the preschools,” said Donaldson.

“It feels like the government has made daycare financially so appealing that preschools are just not even able to have something to offer.”

As a former subsidy recipient herself, Donaldson chose to put her own daughter into a daycare, despite working at a preschool. She said the lower fees and extended hours were too enticing given she was working two jobs at the time.

She said she assumed the learning done at daycares would be similar to preschools, but found the programs differed.

“Preschools kind of offer a bit more of a specialized educational aspect,” said Donaldson.

In a statement to CBC News, the province’s Ministry of Education and Childcare said it knows "that the child care sector has dealt with many significant changes since the agreement was implemented in 2022, and we remain focused on fostering a mixed, flexible system that recognizes the distinct roles different providers play in supporting children’s development.”

“The unique funding approaches we introduced in April 2025 for preschools, daycares and family day homes were informed by extensive engagement with providers and data about child care fees and the costs of delivering high-quality child care in different areas of the province.”

The provincial government said it is seeking to negotiate a longer-term agreement with Canada, one that “works for Alberta families and providers and supports a sustainable, flexible early learning and child care system for years to come.”

Churcher said the province just needs to level the playing field.

“I think it's just a simple shift in how those spaces are recognized under the affordability grant,” she said. “That would have almost an overnight significant impact on our industry.”

Raquel Medina is a journalist based in Edmonton, Alta. She is a 2026 CBC News Summer Scholar and previously worked with CBC's Investigative Unit in Toronto.