An expanded Montessori program will soon open in Westsyde.

(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

KAMLOOPS - If you are looking for childcare Westsyde may just be the place to be right now, with several new licensed facilities recently opening and more on the way.

While it is unclear as to why exactly Westsyde is the chosen location right now staff at the Child Care Resource and Referral program say in addition to the three or four licensed group daycares and three licensed family daycares a couple of group daycares have opened recently with at least one more on the way.

There were rumours one longtime family daycare was closing but it has since been taken over by someone else. Those rumours may have been what spurred the opening of several new facilities.

“The real reason there’s so many,” Dasha Soth speculates, “Is I heard the (oldest) daycare is closing. But Westsyde is expanding anyways.”

Soth is the owner of a Montessori facility, which is expanding into a new space this fall. She says as a family daycare she had many requests for services she was unable to provide because of a lack of space. She bought the former Optimum Air property on Westsyde Road, close to Arthur Stevenson School and was recently approved for the rezoning allowing her to have up to 40 kids on site.

She plans on being able to offer more spaces to infants and toddlers through the expansion, which she says has been her largest request, as well as more after school spots by September. Soth says she is already half booked up, and she was only approved for rezoning just over two weeks ago.

Those two spots are the hardest for parents to find in Kamloops, according to the referral program. The program usually has the most up to date list of which childcare providers are accepting new kids.

Currently Brock has the most licensed childcare facilities in the city and very few facilities have closed down recently, other than the one school age program that was operating out of South Sahali Elementary School. Another program is pending licensing in the Batchelor Heights area as well.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Jennifer Stahn at jstahn@infonews.ca or call 250-819-3723. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.

News from © iNFOnews, 2014