Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The full $400,000 was allocated and there may have been a small amount that the Food First Foundation may have held back. I believe it was around $20,000 to administer the program on our behalf.
Mr. Bromley. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask some questions about the storefront schooling, alternative schooling for students. That may not be appropriately on this page. Would that come under funding to district education authorities on page 10-33 or would this be the time to ask about that?
Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. We’re under education and culture. I guess it could fall under the school. I’ll have to get my deputy to elaborate more in detail about the program.
Mr. Daniels.
Thank you. The funding that is for the storefront or alternative schools is certainly part of the school contributions section of this particular page. So yes, this would be the appropriate area.
I’m sure that the Minister and deputy minister are very well aware that there have been some questions raised recently with respect to the funding that has allowed these programs to exist in communities. I certainly know of Hay River and Fort Smith. I want to talk about Hay River’s.
There’s some question about whether or not it’s effective to fund the alternative schooling on a per student basis, considering that some of the students who are attending and taking advantage of this program are maybe only there to get a few credits in one grade to finish up and they attend at different rates and progress with their studies at different rates. Is it appropriate to fund alternative schools in the same way we would on a per capita, per student basis as we would a regular school?
There have been a number of alternative programs that have emerged in the past couple of years and what we’ve done is we took a look at those programs to see how they’re operating. We had a consultant review the different programs. For the most part, as the Member states, they were running differently than what the regular full-time attendance programs were. A number of them were not attendance based, so we decided that we needed to come up with an approach on how we could support the alternative programs. We developed a formula that takes into account the staffing needs of the alternative programs as well as their O and M costs, and so we’ve adjusted the formula.
We do believe the alternative programs are good programs. They are meeting a critical need for students who cannot attend school on a full-time basis for various reasons. We did come up with a different approach for funding the alternative programs. Thank you.
Is it the department’s understanding from feedback from the district education authorities that this new formula for funding, this alternative schooling, is adequate or, in fact, is this new formula funding putting these programs in jeopardy and threatening them to not exist any longer because of this new funding? What’s the feedback been like from the DEAs who have these programs? What’s their response been to this new formula funding for them? Thank you.
We’ve heard from one board in particular that is concerned about the new approach. The formula that we’ve developed we believe will meet the program delivery costs that are directly associated with these alternative programs. We have said that if there are costs that we have somehow missed in the formula that are directly attributed to supporting the alternative programs, we would consider those costs and make the appropriate adjustments. Thank you.
What was the motivation or what precipitated the change in the funding program for the alternative schools? What brought that about and did, in fact, the funding under the new formula, is it reduced funding for alternative schooling? How does it compare to what was being provided? Thank you.
When we reviewed the alternative programs it became clear that a number of them were running differently. They’re not all quite the same. A number of them are not attendance based, which is the requirement that we have for funding students in our schools, that there’s an attendance-based requirement. So we had to come up with a new approach to support a number of these alternative programs. With the formula it has meant that in some cases the funding has gone down, in a couple cases, and in other situations the funding has increased for some of the alternative programs. Thank you.
Would the deputy minister know, with the new formula, how much the funding for the storefront alternative school in Hay River, how much would that have gone down? Thank you.
Yes, we do have that information. With the formula, the amount of money that the program in Hay River would be getting starting in 2011-12 would be $186,000. If they were funded as if they were full-time attending students, the amount would be $387,000. Thank you.
As part of the consideration for reworking the funding of the alternative schools, what kind of consideration was given to the results that have been achieved? I understand that the students who attend the alternative schooling are ones who would not normally be attending the regular high school and this is a means of ensuring that those who may have dropped out who need credits, who need to learn in a different way, who need to achieve their high school diploma outside of that regular attendance at school Monday to Friday. Were the results taken into consideration when looking at the revised formula for funding?
Yes, the results were definitely a factor in the formula in terms of trying to encourage students in the programs to complete credits. As the number of credits that are completed by students increases, it could have a positive impact on the amount of funding that gets allocated to the alternative programs.
In Hay River, that’s quite a significant decrease of $199,000 per school year for the alternative schooling program. What is the impact of that reduction of $200,000 a year? What’s the impact going to be on that program in Hay River? Thank you.
We believe that the formula we have developed will be sufficient to support the programming needs of the various alternative programs. The other portion of funding may have been used for other purposes in the schools, supporting other needs that are in the schools. That’s where there may be an impact, but for the alternative programs themselves, we believe the formula will provide the sufficient resources. Thank you.
Will there be any impact on the staffing level at the alternative school? Will this decrease of $200,000 impact their resources or their staffing in the next school year? Thank you.
The amount of funding that we’re providing for this particular program in Hay River will provide support for one funded teacher and then there will also be some support there for an assistant to help with the program. There will also be some additional funding to support other ongoing operations and maintenance costs as well as some rent and utility costs that are associated with the program. Thank you.
Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to make a couple of comments and then I want to ask a question. Days run together and I don’t remember when I mentioned it, but I am a little concerned about the money that we’re spending on the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. I find no fault with the initiative, but when I attended the forum in Dettah a couple of weeks ago, my impression was that there are four priorities which the department has determined for the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. The impression I got was that the number one priority was early childhood and that the money would be invested in early childhood. Yet, when I look at the information that we got in the business plans in September, it tells me that the focus in the 2011-12 business year will be a literacy initiative. I have no problems with literacy but I am not quite understanding how, if I read this correctly, a literacy coordinator at headquarters and literacy coaching consultants in DEA and DEC offices, that will really assist us in terms of Aboriginal student achievement.
Some place else I thought I saw the establishment of libraries, which was also connected with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. I’d like a bit of an explanation from the Minister or from the deputy minister what the priorities for the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative are and what the focus of ASA funding in the 2011-2012 budget will be. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, as you know, is still a working document. We are still visiting two more regions. There may have been a shift to focus on literacy for community library coordinator and libraries in the communities. It is based on the input that we received from the general public. We are moving forward on the recommendations. It is not us as a department saying this is what is good for the communities. Next year it could be in a different format. It could be early childhood that we need to focus on.
Mr. Chairman, once we started the initiative, we have identified what should be our priorities to discuss at the regional forum and we have had some feedback. That should be literacy, early childhood and family supports, and also language and culture. Those are four key areas that we have touched on, the student and family support.
As you see, the first priority is literacy. What we are doing here is focussing on literacy and then, following that, early childhood would come into play and student and family support, language and cultural preservation.
Mr. Chairman, as I stated, this ASA is still ongoing. There is a lot of work ahead of us still. Recommendations are still coming. We will continue to work with it and press it even more within our department. Mahsi.
Mr. Chairman, thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that there is lots of work to be done. I appreciate that there are different priorities. I am just having trouble understanding how the establishment of libraries in communities is going to assist our students in school to achieve success. Can I have an explanation from the Minister as to how that is going to happen? Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, again, this has been identified through the venue, the forum. As you know, there are a lot of small, isolated communities that don’t have library services. They have to go to a school, but there are certain operational hours at the school. After hours, the students cannot access. They have no place to go. This is an area that is a high importance to us as well as the Education department.
Mr. Chairman, this suggestion and ideas came from the people and I feel that we need to act on it. That is part of the reason why we have identified the library services, so kids can continue reading even though they are not in school, so they can improve their academic area. Mahsi.
Mr. Chairman, I am having a hard time with the explanation. I will leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We are on page 10-17, Education and culture, operations expenditure summary, $190.945 million.
Agreed.
We are moving on to page 10-18, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, education and culture, grants and contributions, grants, $52,000.
Agreed.
Contributions, total grants and contributions. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wonder if the Minister could remind me what the Healthy Children Initiative Program is. Thank you.
Deputy Minister Daniels.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Healthy Children Initiative is funding that is integrated with our early childhood programs and it is really meant to try to focus on different... People or organizations apply for the funding to support different initiatives in the early childhood area. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I understand. So if you combine the Healthy Children Initiative and the Early Childhood Program, that accounts for a large part of the early childhood development figure mentioned on page 10-17 under program delivery details at the bottom. Thank you.
Minister of Education.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. That is correct, what the Member is referring to.
Okay, page 10-19, grants and contributions, grants and contributions, continued, summary. Agree to page 10-19?
Agreed.
Moving on to 10-20, grants and contributions. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first section here, NWT Arts Council, is $500,000. This is where we give money to groups that are obviously interested in producing some sort of project, whether it is music, whether it is writing or whatnot.
In this area, I know that over the years we have done a really fantastic job of putting some money into the hands of some of our artists throughout the Northwest Territories, but we haven’t always done a brilliant job of sort of collecting or recognizing what has been accomplished by these artists. For instance, we have had many CDs produced by many talented people throughout the Northwest Territories, but if we were to ask if you have a copy -- Education, Culture and Employment -- do you have that CD? Can we listen to it? Can we see what northern artists have done? There is no real compilation ever been done of all the products.
In the last couple of years, Music NWT has revitalized. They used to be an organization called, not WAMP, they were RANT and now they are Music NWT. This is an organization committed to musicians across the Northwest Territories. Has there ever been any thought of engaging an organization like Music NWT to compile all the product that has been created over the years and creating either a website or database or just a location where people can go, click in and look and listen to the high-quality product that has been produced across the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. That is something that we can look at. As you know, it is not only music, there are books that are being produced, arts and crafts, so we need to look at all venues, I guess. The money that we distributed, there is almost 40 different organizations, 40 different individuals, so we can look at those areas that the Member is referring to.
The Minister actually hit on the second part. After I talked about music, I was going to say there is a significant amount of other product. In looking at it, can the Minister commit to putting together some sort of package that is easily accessible to people so that they can see or even listen to some of the product, even maybe link to some of the artists’ websites so that more people can get a wider range of an idea of what some of our fantastic northern artists, performing artists, musicians, painters, writers, authors are doing?
We should be very proud of the product that exists and the talent that exists in the Northwest Territories. We are putting a lot of money into them right now and I think it is time that we highlight some of them and show people what is out there and what we have contributed to. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the Member that we should look at this. There are a lot of products out there that we need to showcase and I believe even Industry, Tourism and Investment travels to different sites highlighting the North. So we can work with that, even as far as updating our websites with all the links. We have information on these individuals, because obviously they submitted an application. Some of these individuals here, they are continuous individuals that apply on an annual basis. So, Mr. Chair, we will certainly work with that. Mahsi.
That’s great. Maybe if the Minister can provide me with some data on how far those records go back, because I know there’s product from three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, 10 years. It would be great to go back and capture some of the stuff we’ve done, so if the Minister can provide me that, that would be great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We’ll provide the information since we started that programming through the NWT Arts Council. We’ll provide that detail. Mahsi.
Can I have the report of Committee of the Whole, please, Mr. Krutko.
