Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education. I’d like to ask him a couple of questions with regard to his Response to Written Question 6-17(5), with regard to the explanation of funding and reallocation of funding for junior kindergarten.
In 2014-15, $1.8 million will be reallocated from education authorities, and I take it from the Minister’s response that this is from all authorities, even from those four authorities who will not get junior kindergarten in 2014-15.
I would like to ask the Minister if he would please confirm that my understanding is correct, that the four authorities who do not get JK in ’14-15 will, in fact, be losing money.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The rolling out of the junior kindergarten starting this new school year, 2014-15, will cover 29 schools, and then the following year it would be the regional centres, and then the third year will be covering all of Yellowknife. It is a three-year approach, and it will cover all communities, all schools, the 49 schools that we’ve been talking about, the 33 communities. There’s going to be some decrease and increase into our formula when we deal with the school boards, so it does reflect on that as well.
I didn’t really hear an answer there so I will try again. My understanding is that, for instance, the two school districts in Yellowknife, Yellowknife Education District No. 1 and Yellowknife Catholic Schools will lose funding to provide junior kindergarten in 29 communities and they will not get kindergarten in the ’14-15 year.
My question to the Minister is: Does he consider it fair that the larger centres, four communities, will give up some funding with no return in ’14-15?
We have to keep in mind that we’re rolling out the junior kindergarten for all the children in the Northwest Territories. We talk about the larger centres and the smaller centres. We’re here for the Northwest Territories, so we are providing those benefits to those communities and, more specifically, those 10 communities that do not have licenced child care programming, daycare programming, and the preschools and so forth. At the end of the day, we’re serving the children of the Northwest Territories and it will benefit the whole Northwest Territories.
I find it interesting that the Minister twice in the last couple of days has referenced 10 communities without daycares and in the same breath that he’s talking about junior kindergarten, so I’m wondering if he’s equating daycare and junior kindergarten. I hope it’s not so.
I’m trying to understand the numbers in the answer that the Minister gave me to my written question. There are two high schools in Yellowknife. One is Sir John Franklin and the other is St. Pats. Sir John in YK No. 1 is the bigger high school but Yellowknife Catholic Schools will see a much bigger reduction in their funding: $214,000 for Catholic schools and only $62,000 for YK No. 1.
Why is there this big discrepancy when the bigger school is losing less money?
There is a breakdown for all the school boards, the 33 communities that we service. As I stated, some will be decreased, some will have a net increase in their formula funding, but the less minimal impact would be up to 1.5 percent, and I’m sure that’s manageable within the administration of the school boards.
When it comes to, let’s say, Yellowknife Catholic School Board, in 2014-15 there will be a decrease of $434,000, projected ’15-16 there will be a decrease of $264,000, projected ’16-17 will be $484,000 that will be given to the school board. It does vary between the school boards. In the Yellowknife district education authority in 2014-15 there’s a negative $569,000, ’15-16 projected $322,000 negative. But at the same time, 2016-2017, there is going to be a plus of $829,000, so $62,000 out of a $24 million budget. I’m sure that can be managed.
These are some of the areas that we’ve been talking about with the superintendents, so we are having ongoing discussions with them and we are rolling out the program this fall.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for those numbers. The Minister said in his response that our education authorities are run by professional administrators, and I totally agree with the Minister, and I, too, have confidence in those authorities and in the trustees that run the boards, but my understanding is that it’s been fairly late notice for these reductions to the superintendents and to the boards and gives them little time to adjust.
I would like to ask the Minister, for my information, when were the education authorities advised of these reductions, these changes in pupil-teacher ratio, and how were they advised? Was it to the board chairs? Was it to the superintendents? Was it by letter or by phone?
Throughout the Early Childhood Development Framework there has been a lot of engagement and the forum that we held in Yellowknife and surrounding communities. The superintendents have been involved, during the transition period of the discussion, about what kind of initiative should be undertaken by the department. One of them was junior kindergarten, the discussions that we’ve been having, and I presented to the board chairs of what our approach would be, part of the Early Childhood Development Framework, working along with Health and Social Services. The superintendents have been involved with my department, my department’s been involved with the superintendents, so there’s been conversing back and forth since last year, I believe late fall, and then the discussion of how they can be involved during the implementation stages. We have reached out to the superintendents and they provide feedback, suggestions and ideas. Instead of rolling out the PTR from Grade 10 to Grade 12, they suggested coming back to saying let’s start with kindergarten to Grade 12. So we have initiated that. We have accepted their recommendations, so they have been involved. This is an area that we work closely with the school boards and we have taken their recommendations, made those changes, so it does reflect on the numbers that I highlighted earlier. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Yakeleya.
