Wendy Bisaro

I’m very glad to hear that new funding may be on the horizon, but if these initiatives are being implemented in the ‘14-15 school year, the budget for that school year is already over and done, and I am not convinced that we are going to get new money.

I spoke a bit about contingencies for school boards in my statement. Yesterday the Minister, when he was talking about contingencies, stated that, “those monies should be expended into educational programming, so we support that as well.” I am very pleased to hear that the Minister supports spending contingency money on educational programming...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up from my statement and ask some questions of the Education, Culture and Employment Minister about the Education Renewal and Innovation Project and how it’s going to be funded.

I recently received a letter from the Minister responding to questions that I raised in March of this year about the Education Renewal and Innovation Project. In that letter it indicates 10 initiatives from the ERI plan, well, actually 11 if you consider Junior Kindergarten, but the 10 initiatives are set to start in the 2014-15 school year. However, in the letter there was...

Why are we seeing the outright denial of any assistance to cover the extra pension costs? Don’t all NWT teachers deserve the same standard of pension benefits? Apparently not, according to the Minister.

Yellowknife school boards are being unfairly targeted by Education, Culture and Employment through funding cuts and denials of applications for extraordinary funding. Just because they have taxation capability is no reason not to treat them equitably with all other NWT school authorities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move we report progress.

---Carried

My next question is similar to Mr. Dolynny’s in looking at the cash amount, but I guess if you can’t tell me the percentage, you probably can’t tell me the amount of dollars. I’m looking to know whether or not the dollar amount that we are forgiving and/or that we are losing through defaulted loans is going up or down over time.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I have similar concerns to my colleague Mr. Dolynny. I also wondered about why we needed the increase, and I appreciate the answer. I do have questions around the amounts, similar to Mr. Dolynny.

We’ve talked about a default rate, I think defaulting on loans rate, and we’ve talked about a remission rate. My question is not so much the dollar amount but a trend.

Has the percentage of remission and defaulting on loans gone up or gone down over the last number of years? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The department provides funding to eight district education authorities in the NWT according to a predetermined formula. Elementary and secondary school contributions are provided to education authorities based on government priorities and education needs. This funding framework plays a pivotal role in directing and supporting education councils to achieve education objectives. School contributions are calculated based on enrolment and to cover annual operating and maintenance costs.

Provide a...

Thanks to the Minister for the explanation. Generally, policy is developed internally. Why is it that we need to go to an RFP and hire a contractor to develop this part of the policy? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. The Minister and I have to respectfully agree to disagree. He is forcing the boards to make one of two bad options. They either use their contingency to fund the shortfall or they have to cut staff and increase their class sizes and reduce the quality of education.

The boards use this contingency money to fund extra staff, so they may get a special needs student who needs an assistant. They may get an extra 20 students in September that they need to find a staff person for.

I would like to know from the Minister, without a surplus, if my board has no surplus, in such a...

The Minister mentions an action plan. I know that that has been out there for quite some time. We have been waiting for that. It was originally scheduled for January and I know committee suggested that it be pushed back. Another question would be: When are we going to see that action plan?

The letter indicates that some of these initiatives will be funded from existing budgets but that others will require funding to be put in place. I need a little bit further elaboration from the Minister.

Will there be new funding for these initiatives, or will he continue with the current funding from within...