Help with a letter to parents re: funding

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

 

Hope everything is going well for you and you are (some of you at least) already enjoying the holidays. For us it's no rest for the wicked as we are an all year round setting

 

I need to pick your brains as I am stuck for wording for a letter I am trying to write to parents.

 

We are basically full day care from 8-6 and we currently offer the funding for 3 session (8-1 or 1-6) however most of our families that have children on funded places only don't work, so often drop them after 9 and collect early as well. We thought it would give our children and our setting more consistency to offer 3 hours every day. Also we had some children take their children out from our nursery to send them to school nursery as they preferred the 3 hour sessions. It could be a win win for both sides.

 

I would like to send a letter to parents to explain these changes but am stuck for how to word it..

 

Any ideas?

 

Much appreciated already.

[Panders]

Not sure I fully understand how you are currently operating your funded sessions Miss Doofus, however. I would probably think something along the lines of As you are aware our current practise has been to offer parents any 3 hours between 8-1 or 1-6, however, we have found this disruptive to the children and nursery routine. Therefore, from ............................ our funded hours will be ..................... each day.

[tracyb46]

We are changing to a full day care from January 2016 from a sessional day care. We got advice from the local authority and other settings and the offer we will do is as follows...... 8-6, 8-1, 1-6, 9-3 and 9-12 or 12-3. We have done a register of the current intake for September to see what they want for January and overwhelmingly it is 9-3 and 9-12 parents want. We have 38 parents wanting those hours and 8 that want the other options. It gives flexibility for parents though to offer a range of hours and as word gets out that we are no longer a sessional preschool, I do think there will be more take up of the 8-6's.

When you send your letter out make it really positive, that you are offering more flexibility and choice and in our circumstance we offer as an incentive of doing 5+ hours of having a lunch included. The parents loved that and we just increased our session a bit to cover it.

Good luck!