The Hanover School Division is paving the way for a new daycare in Niverville.

Superintendent Randy Dueck says the childcare space is part of the second phase of the Niverville High School build and that phase is ahead of schedule.

“While we were anticipating completion around March, now it looks like we may be completed earlier than that.”

Dueck says the next step for the division is to request proposals from various childcare service providers in the area.

“We’ll be sending that out, getting some responses, making an assessment of the tender, and hopefully, in the not too distant future, identifying who will be running the daycare.”

According to Mayor Myron Dyck, Niverville currently has one daycare and a few home-based childcare services. He says his community is very young and will benefit from the additional facility.

“When you have a community where the average age is 31, and over 60% of your residents are under the age of 18, you have a lot of children. We know that many parents and guardians are working and need childcare, so this is huge for our community.”

Dyck says, when you are talking childcare, more is always better.

“There is never enough daycare spaces,” he comments, “it’s great that more people will be able to utilize this but there will still be a large waiting list needing even more.”