"Right now our kindergartens are under grave threat. Drastic changes are being made across the country," she said.
"I believe we have the power to affect change, I believe the real power lies in us, communities. We are the owners of the kindergartens, not the Government, and not the associations."
"We are the taxpayers and it is our children accessing the service."
Ms Scott said the sessional model of kindergarten had been tailored to suit the needs "of the little people it served".
"As a society I believe we have somehow sleepwalked into the position where we're institutionalising our newest members of society at an alarming rate," she said, as data showed new entrants had spent 10,000 hours in a form of non-parental care.
"The truth of the matter is kindergartens are endeavouring to survive in a world where the funding model that is used to fund it was not designed for it and has become increasingly inadequate".
Since 2009, early childhood centres had lost funding of more than $500 a child through a freeze of core funding, with any extra money provided solely to cover increased enrolments.
This had caused a severe funding squeeze which had led to sharp increases to parent fees, a deterioration of child to teacher ratios and an increasing reliance on unqualified staff.
Their concerns were echoed by local Labour candidates - incumbent Napier MP Stuart Nash, and Tukituki candidate Anna Lorck.
Those gathered also heard from a panel including ChildForum chief executive Dr Sarah Alexander and NZ Kindergarten Inc chief executive Claire Wells.
Ms Wells said there needed to be a commitment from government to champion high quality ECE for every child, to restore requirement for all teacher-led services to have 100 per cent qualified teachers, and meet the cost of 100 per cent qualified teaching workforce.
Dr Alexander said Hawke's Bay was "leading the way" by addressing the issue, showing the community could stand up and question what was happening "to our beloved kindergarten system".
While some referred to the free kindergarten model as a "dinosaur", she argued there were many benefits of this model, which were being threatened by recent changes, and as the service moved toward a commercial model.
In 2007, there were 542 sessional kindergartens - licensed to have children for under four hours. However, by last month only one New Zealand kindergarten held this license, and was funded 100 per cent for qualified teachers.
Changes meant kindergartens losing their unique identity and having to become more like childcare centres, from adopting more commercial models to diversifying into other forms of childcare.
Earlier this year the Heretaunga Kindergarten Association (HKA) recently reviewed the way it offers kindergarten services to local families.
In March meetings were held at several HKA member kindergartens to discuss concerns around restructuring proposals in response to tighter financial constraints in recent years.
Later that month some Hawke's Bay kindergartens joined others around the country to deliver messages to Parliament.
These asked MPs to sign a New Zealand Educational Institute "Have a Heart" pledge to commit to early childhood education and restore funding, reduce teacher to child ratios and restore 100 per cent qualified teachers in Early Childhood Education.
Mr Nash spoke of the importance of providing quality kindergartens, as the opportunities given in early childhood "matters for a lifetime".
"We had, and I believe we still do, we had a world leading kindergarten and ECE sector," he said. "We fought a lot of battles to get there".
"What we do know is that from 2007 to 2015 funding has dropped by $500 a child. That is not sustainable."
He warned that if the situation reached a stage where kindergartens had to ask for donations, "you will find that children simply do not turn up and they will be the children...who need to go to these centres more than anyone else".
Speaking of the rapid changes to the model, Ms Lorck said "two years from now if we don't do something to change it...[kindy] will be gone, it's become that serious".
The candidate said she and Mr Nash were 100 per cent behind the parents, promising Labour would fund teachers, and would return back to 100 per cent ECE fully qualified teachers.