New daycare to open in 2026

After years of delays, Step by Step Child and Family Center is finally one step closer to opening its new daycare across from Rapids Distribution.

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) has owned the building on Old Malone Highway since 2019. It was only after a Council meeting on October 15 however that the Council table voted to enter into a 20-year lease agreement with Step by Step.

“This thing has been in the works since 2012,” said Natalie Beauvais, Step by Step’s executive director. “We went to tender at the end of 2019, and then COVID hit, so everything got put away to the side.”

The future daycare will have 37 spots in all – including 27 spots for children 18 months and older and 10 spots for those under 18 months. The hope is to begin renovations by the spring of 2025 and to open in 2026, Beauvais said.  

All the spots in the daycare will be made available to the community on a subsidized basis.

It would become Step by Step’s fourth facility. About a third of the funding for the project came from Quebec’s family ministry, Beauvais said, with Step by Step raising the remainder.

A call for bids from local contractors looking to do the renovation work was issued by the MCK earlier this month, but unfortunately no locals applied. As a result, the tender will now open to non-locals as of November 1.

“Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, being optimistic, we're going to be in the facility by the end of 2025,” Beauvais said.

Step by Step desperately needs more space. It currently has 150 children on its waiting list, which includes 57 under 18 months old and 93 over that age.

A shortage of educators, qualified ones especially, has made it tough to keep up with the demand from parents. She said she desperately needs four more.

“I'm constantly looking for educators,” Beauvais said. “I had to close one classroom, and I almost had to close a second at Step by Step’s main building too because we don't have enough educators.”

She’s hoping a 15-month training initiative they’ll be offering through Saint-Hyacinthe CEGEP in the winter of 2025 will help to fill in those gaps. 

“I'm looking at having the cohort happen directly in our main building at Step by Step,” Beauvais said. “Individuals are going to actually be on the floor, working in the daycare, and I'm going to have a full-time professor in for 35 hours a week to support them and teach them.”

Eight of her own staff will take part in the training, which will give them the added benefit of becoming fully qualified childhood educators after 15 months.

At least 15 participants are needed to open a cohort, Beauvais said. With that, seats will also be open to community members interested in registering. 

More information about how to apply will be out soon, she said.

[email protected]