Parents of young children in Lively now have more child care options as Ecole St-Paul and Conseil Scolaire Catholique du Nouvel-Ontario (CSCNO) staff celebrated the official opening of a Francophone daycare on March 23.

Located at 185 Sixth Ave., the new daycare comes on the heels of a request of Walden and Copper Cliff parents for a French-language daycare. The CSCNO renovated the school to provide modern spaces suitable for the needs of preschoolers once the initiative was made possible through the support of the City of Greater Sudbury's Children Services Division.

"Our parents have been waiting for this service to ease the transition between the home, daycare and school," Charles de la Riva, École St-Paul school principal, said in a press release. "Given the growth of the Francophone community in the Walden-Copper Cliff area, we are confident that this daycare will continue to be an important part of our school for years to come."

Since last September, 20 children aged 18 months to four years have benefited from the service, which is managed by the Walden Day Care Centre. Additionally, École St-Paul has enjoyed sustained enrollment growth of 48 per cent since the 2005-2006 school year. Currently, the school is home to 121 students  from junior kindergarten to Grade 8.

"The CSCNO recognizes the importance of providing this early childhood service to Walden and Copper Cliff families so as to help the children of these communities develop and thrive even before they start junior kindergarten," Marcel Montpellier, CSCNO president, said in a press release. "We would like to thank the City of Greater Sudbury for their significant help in establishing this Francophone daycare at École St-Paul."

With 19 daycares in its schools, the CSCNO has developed close partnerships with early childhood educators, while countless parents have reaped the rewards of before and after school programs for their children."

By incorporating daycare centres in its schools, the CSCNO makes it possible for children to begin their formal education on a sound linguistic basis," Lyse-Anne Papineau, CSCNO director of education, said. "In a minority setting, it is essential to provide children with this kind of learning environment from a young age and contribute to their academic and identity success."

The CSCNO provides early childhood and adult French Catholic education to more than 7,400 student in 28 elementary and 10 secondary schools throughout northern Ontario.