Langley Forest School lost its licence to operate due to its unused indoor facility
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Eighty families are scrambling to secure child care after the sudden closure of an outdoor preschool in Langley weeks before school was scheduled to return.
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“It’s been devastating,” said Ashley Lindbo, whose seven-year-old son attended the Langley Forest School for the last few years.
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“He’s in his last year there, so it was emotional to begin with. He’s going into Grade 2, and not having that break from mainstream school is going to affect him dramatically.”
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Langley Forest School was founded in 1985. In 2014, it shifted to forest-based programming that focuses on child-led and play-based learning completely outdoors. It operates out of Williams Park and South Langley Regional Park. Its indoor address is listed as Fort Langley Community Church, which is about a 10-minute drive from Williams Park.
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Carol LaJeunesse, the school’s president, said the school was shut down by Fraser Health earlier this month after it determined the school’s community care facility licence had expired because the school had not operated at its Glover Road church building for 12 consecutive months.
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LaJeunesse said she has tried to speak with Fraser Health to get clarity on how regularly the school needs to use the indoor space, but so far the conversations have not been helpful. She said in the last school year, the school used the indoor facility at the church once a month.
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“I registered everybody in January, February, March, April for this coming up school year, and then pulled their first month’s tuition, which Fraser Health knows that’s how we function. And then while we were on holidays, we got this letter telling us our licence is expired,” LaJeunesse said.
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In a letter to parents on Tuesday, LaJeunesse said she is fighting to keep the school open but has had to lay off 10 staff due to the loss of its child-care spaces that were supporting 80 families.
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In an emailed statement, Fraser Health said a community care facility licence “must be attached to a facility that the program operates from” and the facility “must be available for use during the hours of operation of the program.”
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Fraser Health said: “In this case, the community care facility licence was associated with the Glover Road (church) premises. Fraser Health’s licensing team determined that the premises was not being operated as a community care facility and was not being used by Langley Forest School as the facility from which its child-care program operated.”
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Fraser Health said the licensing requirements do not preclude child-care programs from holding outdoor activities; they just ensure children have “access to an appropriate and safe facility when they need it.”
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It added that the expiry of the licence does not mean the school has to shut down, and Fraser Health’s licensing team was available to work with Langley Forest School to be licensed once again.
