Alfred Moses

For the 201718 academic school year, $9.6 million has been identified for approximately 72 program support teachers. The overall budget for inclusive schooling is over $25 million. In the health, wellness, and student support, the line item budget for that is over $3 million.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to recognize one of our translators who is here with us this week, Miss Ruth Carroll. She is a former resident of Inuvik and I just want to say mahsi cho for all the work that she is doing translating to the people throughout the Northwest Territories, and also say mahsi cho to all the translators. March is Aboriginal Languages Month, and I appreciate the work that they do in maintaining and revitalizing our Aboriginal languages here in the Northwest Territories. Mahsi.

Currently, with the rollouts and the numbers that we're getting in with students who might be entering junior kindergarten, our funding formula for the schools will reflect what we have in contributions with the education authorities. Currently, our staff is working with the education boards and authorities to see how that funding is going to roll out. Busing is a topic in those discussions, and once we have a resolution and resolve how we're going to address that, we'll come back and we'll let the Member know.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, it doesn't. The inclusive schooling is a different part of funding that focuses on the needs of the children. With the implementation and rollout of junior kindergarten in the 2017-18 academic year, we feel that four-year-olds coming into the education system have the sufficient supports of all staff who will be in the school setting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we did fully commit to fully funding junior kindergarten in the 2017-18 year, which does include junior kindergarten students, four-year-olds.

Once again, that is another part of funding that we provide through our programs. It is based on enrolment, so the ALCB funding will go up when enrolment in the schools go up. The majority of that funding actually goes to fund instructors who run cultural programs throughout the whole school and is available for all students. Our curriculum within junior kindergarten does have a cultural component, but the junior kindergarten program will also have access to all cultural programming and activity there. So that ALCB program is not directly linked to the funding with junior kindergarten.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the most important areas we can invest in is early childhood development, and the Government of the Northwest Territories has made a commitment in its mandate to do this by implementing its Right from the Start Framework. Ages zero to five are the most critical time in a child’s development, and the work that the Departments of Health and Social Services and Education, Culture and Employment have been doing in partnership have been helping all of the children in the Northwest Territories.

Over the past year, we have made some significant improvements...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also would like to take this opportunity to welcome and recognize a good friend in the gallery, and a good friend of the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Patrick Joss. I know he is a big fan of the Legislative Assembly, and I am really glad that he could be joining here today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today is national Pink Shirt Day, a day celebrated during the last Wednesday of February of each year. We provided pink carnations for all of the Members, and I am pleased to see all the pink in the House today, marking our acknowledgement that bullying in any form is unacceptable.

This initiative was started by two brave young men in Nova Scotia, David Shepherd and Travis Price, who gave away 50 pink shirts after a grade 9 student was bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school.

These two young men raised national awareness of a significant societal problem...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do agree; we invest a lot of money in Aurora College. We've seen with these two programs in particular that there were some challenges. We have low graduation rates. Once again, I do want to emphasize to any of the students who might be listening who are in these programs: focus, study hard to completion and graduation, because that was one of the indicators that brought these programs forward. I will talk with the departments about that foundational review. We'll have discussions. We'll sit down with the chair as well as with the president and see what the next steps...