Starting next school year, one of the five after-school care groups in the St. Josef children’s home in Karlsfeld will close. This led to a lot of protest from the parents: Among other things, a parents’ initiative was founded, which formulated an open letter to Mayor Stefan Kolbe (CSU) and started a petition on the Internet to “maintain the fifth after-school care group in St. Josef – for a family-friendly support in Karlsfeld”. As a result, a discussion recently took place between three parents’ councils from St. Josef, Mayor Kolbe and CSU municipal councilor and head of the primary school Ursula Weber in the town hall. Parents’ councilor Elke Ruppert says that it was a very open conversation: “In the community, our arguments against the after-school group closure were listened to,” but: “They didn’t give us much hope that the container would remain open.”
The reason for the closure is that the after-school care container has been dilapidated for years. Kolbe rejects the suggestion from some parents to replace the old container with a new one. Because this is associated with considerable costs and it would take about a year until the planning was completed and the old container was dismantled, says Kolbe. Greens councilor Heike Miebach would like to submit an application for a replacement container, “at least as a temporary measure,” she writes.
“The number of births in the community has gone down a bit again”
Your existing application for “strategic planning of afternoon care for primary school children in Karlsfeld” was discussed on Thursday in the municipal council. In it, the Greens demand that the town hall administration create a projection of how many elementary school students currently and in the next ten years need a place in after-school care and how many places are available in Karlsfeld. Children who will live in planned Karlsfeld construction areas, such as in the Anna district, should also be taken into account. In order to analyze the situation, the municipality should hire an external consultant if necessary, write the Greens.
Mayor Kolbe was critical of this, because a few years ago the municipal council commissioned an external company to carry out such a projection – but due to Karlsfeld’s rapid growth, it was pretty wrong and still cost a lot of money. He therefore advocated that the municipal administration prepare the extrapolation. According to Kolbe, it is also difficult to foresee the need for afternoon care in the next ten years, because: “The number of births in the community has decreased a bit in recent years,” he said.
Nevertheless, he praised the Greens’ application as forward-looking, because from 2026 parents of primary school children will be entitled to all-day care. And Kolbe said that many parents can’t look after their children at home in the afternoon because they work: “We live in a region where you can’t afford for a parent to stay at home.”
“We still need to invest more to solve this problem.”
His party colleague Ursula Weber also announced that she would approve the application. She explained that there are currently enough daycare places in Karlsfeld, but there is a “bottleneck in after-school care places”. Above all, this affects the children of their primary school (VGS). But in the coming years, according to Weber, the situation will ease when the new building of the VGS is finished: Open and bound all-day classes will then be offered there, with the open all-day classes the offer in the afternoon is voluntary, with the bound classes it is obligatory. Until the new building is finished, there are bridging options for afternoon care, “although not close to home,” says Weber: for example, in the midday care in Allach or the elementary school on Krenmoosstrasse. Weber’s conclusion regarding the availability of after-school care places in Karlsfeld: “We still have to invest more to solve this problem.”
For better care planning, SPD municipal councilor Venera Sansone also suggested that parents can already indicate in the crèche or kindergarten that they want to remain employed in the coming years and that their child later needs a day care place. Eventually, all local councilors voted in favor of the plan to strategically plan after-school care for the years to come. The Main and Finance Committee will soon discuss who will take over.
“We regret that an exceptionally good childcare facility is closing.”
However, this decision does not help the protesting parents of St. Josef. You will have to do without the fifth after-school care group in the coming year. Tamara Inan, mother from Karlsfeld, writes on the petition’s website: “We deeply regret that an exceptionally good care facility for 27 school children is closing”. Because the children from the association’s elementary school then have to be driven to the lunchtime care facility two kilometers away on Krenmoosstraße after class, the bus ride costs the parents 3.80 euros per day and per child: “Affected families have to accept that the children expensively driven through the community with organized buses and collected again in the afternoon by car, which is expensive and a burden on the community and the environment.”
The petition to “receive the fifth after-school care group” can be found at: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/erhalt-der-fuenften-hortgruppe-in-st-josef-fuer-eine-familienfreunde-betreuung-in-karlsfeld