A cash-strapped Scarborough daycare that threw parents into a panic on Friday after announcing it would shut down will remain open — for now. Board members of the Progress Child Care Centre, a subsidized daycare serving the Kennedy Rd.-Hwy. 401 area, announced at a rally on Sunday that its main building will be open Monday for the 90 children it serves — despite being underfunded and $100,000 in debt. While the 30-year-old daycare will lose its 21-spot infant and toddler centre in the coming weeks as a result of money problems, the city will send in a supervisor to work with the centre in a bid to help it make ends meet. But the long-term survival of the daycare is contingent on city funding, insisted board treasurer Rob Fletcher. For now, he said, staff have committed to show up, despite not knowing if they’ll see another pay cheque. “Our staff have committed to continue to serve out kids without any assurance that the money will be found to cover costs,” he said, calling for the city to boost financial support for the daycare, as well as others across the city. “For now, I’m a little bit relieved,” said Kathy Ann Campbell, who, along with grandson, Taejon, would have been left in the lurch had the daycare closed. “But for now its a (temporary solution). What’s going to happen in the future? This is just a short-term fix. My concern is a long-term fix.” The daycare receives $1,200 a month from the city for every child it looks after, said Fletcher. Since Progress daycare is almost 100 % subsidized, it can’t ask for more money from parents like others in better-off areas. NDP MPP Peter Tabuns said daycare centres in his own riding of Toronto-Danforth have been placed in the same tenuous position, and that the province needs to step up and help what he considers to be an essential service.

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