Julie Green

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The Minister has yet to brief the Members of the Standing Committee on Social Development on the MOU reached with the teachers. These are important changes, and the Minister is not making allies by ignoring it. That said, let us get into the rationale for this decision. What is the policy basis for cutting instructional hours? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I worked for the CBC, I remember meeting a family in Fort Good Hope and talking to them about education. This conversation happened maybe about 10 years ago. The mom in that family told me that when it came time for high school for their youngest child -- they had maybe four or five kids -- the family decided they would make a special effort for him. They would spend less time on the land and more time in town so that he could attend school every day. They encouraged him to do his best, and he did. He eventually earned a high school diploma and then...

It is my understanding that ECE sends draft budgets to the school boards on almost a daily basis. In the most recent budget that was sent last night, there is no money for inclusive schooling. My question is: this is the Minister's pot of money to spend; when is he going to include JK in the inclusive schooling funding?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my final question has to do with the timing of making the funding available, or at least the announcement that the money is available and exactly what amount. The school boards need it by the end of March because they are told to create a budget by ECE and it's due to ECE by the end of March. Will they have a firm idea, to the dollar, of how much money they're getting from the government for September by the end of March, yes or no? Thank you.

Thank you for your patience. What I understand, then, is that there will be no need for the schools to cut their internal staffing in order to staff JK. Am I correct in understanding that?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to a couple of questions that I asked yesterday that I didn't feel I had satisfactory answers for, and they are questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Speaker, when the department briefed the standing committee at the beginning of December, the department said that the school boards would have to invest some of their own money in the implementation of junior kindergarten and that that would be no problem for them because schools had been consistently funded above required legislation.

So when I went to the town...

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Thursday, February 9, 2017, I will move the following motion: now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that notwithstanding Rule 4, when this House adjourns on February 9, 2017, it shall be adjourned until Tuesday, February 14, 2017.

And further, that any time prior to February 14, 2017, if the Speaker is satisfied after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice...

Mr. Speaker, my question at this point is: if funding doesn't include inclusive schooling and busing and funding for Aboriginal activities, then what is the definition of fully funded?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the ways that junior kindergarten is different from the rest of the other grades in school is that busing needs to take into account the fact that some of those students are as young as three years, eight months. They're very little. So the school buses need to be equipped with seatbelts and they need to have additional staffing on them. That means the cost of busing children to attend junior kindergarten is going to go up. Will the Minister of Education pay for those extra costs? Thank you.

The Minister can't have it both ways. He can't have junior kindergarten as a grade of education within the school system paid for by the school budgets and then say it's somehow exempt from the standard programming that applies to all the other students there, especially something as important as inclusive schooling, which is already being reduced in this budget. So my question once again is: when is the Minister going to include the money for inclusive schooling to extend to junior kindergarten?