Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment today. With all due respect to the Minister and the good intentions of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment with respect to Junior Kindergarten as a response to the need for more emphasis on early childhood development, I believe that the rollout and the planning and the way that this is being implemented is not right. There are so many downfalls. There are so many negative repercussions in the larger centres where we already have a very good focus on early childhood development.
I am very frustrated about this, and I’d like to ask the Minister how the department can add what is essentially another class to the public school system without providing the additional funding to cover the cost of that service.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of the Junior Kindergarten, obviously, is to roll out the Junior Kindergarten in all 33 communities once it is all a phase three approach. Right now, we’re delivering 23 of 33 communities. When we talk about early childhood development, we want to give options to the parents. There has been great work that is early learning programming in Hay River. I’m fully aware of that, and we are working with that, as well, but we have to keep in mind that some of those programs in the communities are fee for service, and this Junior Kindergarten, obviously, is a great advantage for the parents that cannot afford the JK early learning. This is an option, whether it be part time or full time at the community level. Over a year period in 23 communities we will be re-evaluating where we stand and then continue on with regional delivery of JK and, also, the third phase as well.
This is a perfect example of the government delivering an initiative that they think is good in a very wide broadcast area without the thinking and without the rationalization and the figuring out what the ripple effect is. There’s no sense in re-evaluating Junior Kindergarten in Hay River after you have gutted Aboriginal Head Start, Treehouse, Growing Together, French preschool, the Hay River Cooperative Playschool, which has trained professionals that have been in those jobs for many years. It’s an institution in our community. The community donates $50,000 a year to the Hay River Cooperative Playschool. This is volunteerism. This is an NGO. This is a place with trained workers. There’s no sense in re-evaluating after you’ve gutted the private sector and the NGO sector by taking all the four-year-olds out of the program.
Why can’t we take the resources and target it at the small communities that have nothing in the community that actually have the indications and the proof that early childhood development would actually benefit those folks? Why can’t we direct the resources in that direction? Why do we, as a government, have to do it and broadcast it in such a way as to actually do more harm than good in the regional centres? What option does our DEA have to opt out of implementing Junior Kindergarten?
On May 23rd I met with the DEA chairs, and this particular subject came up. Due to the fact that I’ve listened to the DEA chairs and superintendents, who were part of the discussion, as well, that I should give some flexibility, which I have. Whether it be part time or full time, I gave them the flexibility. The DEAs can decide on that; not only that, the other areas, if it’s going to be full-time, part-time or optional programming. We gave them the option to deliver this into the communities. That’s the reason why we have 23 communities.
I’m the Minister responsible for the whole Northwest Territories. This particular program benefits all communities and it is optional for the parents to take on this program if they wish. As I stated before, not every parent can afford early learning such as the Junior Kindergarten preschool program. There are very successful programs. I clearly hear the Member referring to Aboriginal Head Start and other programs. We are not gutting them. We are working with them. We are…how can we improve in those areas.
Again, JK is optional. It’s a program that will be delivered right now in 23 communities and on to regional the following year, the second phase.
I would like to refute the Minister’s assertion that this is beneficial to all communities. I just listed that when you take the four-year-olds out of all these other programs that are existing and have existed for many years with very good success, you can’t do it in the name of… and not all parents can afford early childhood development. There is no fee for service. There’s parents’ cooperative. There’s volunteerism that goes into the Hay River Cooperative Playschool. Parents are involved. That’s a good thing. The Treehouse, the parents are involved. The Growing Together, the parents come with the children. That’s a good thing. There is no fee for service on any of these early…Aboriginal Head Start. That’s not a daycare, per se. Anyways, I would like to counteract what the Minister said about that.
If this is about getting early childhood development to people who can’t afford it, then subsidize the few people who do want it and it is not optional. If you’re saying that Junior Kindergarten is going to be there regardless, it’s optional for the people to uptake, but it’s not optional for the DEA to implement it. So, I don’t know.
At our DEA meeting we talked about laying down on the road and I think we might end up having to do this on this, and I think the DEA should tell the department, in no uncertain terms, you’re not going to gut and you’re not going to ruin what we already have going in our community. Maybe there’s a few parents that go like, hey, great, my four-year-old is in school all day, I don’t need to pay for daycare, I’d say it’s very, very few. I don’t think it’s beneficial to Hay River, and like I said, we may lay down on the road. What’s going to happen to us when we do that? Thank you.
Mahsi. That’s the very reason we’re working with the South Slave Education Council. We met with them two weekends ago, myself and Minister Beaulieu, because we talked about PWS infrastructure-wise and as Minister responsible for Education. We’ve met with the South Slave, all the board chairs, and they’ve raised their concerns as well. I’ve made a commitment to work with them to deliver this particular second-phased approach, how can we best deliver that. We’ve heard their concerns.
So, again, we’re at the stage where 23 communities are currently delivering it. We’re into two months already, and again, by next year we should have a clear idea where we stand on that from our experience from delivering of the JK to 23 communities. But we have to keep in mind that my department is working very closely with the DEAs, DECs all across the Northwest Territories. More specifically now with the South Slave region, with the board chairs and also the superintendents. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister is bound and determined, regardless of the facts, to proceed with implementing Junior Kindergarten in all communities. Please reconsider, please take those resources and direct them to where there are no options for early childhood development in some of the smaller communities, and please don’t with your wide-sweeping approach, ruin a good thing that’s going on in the larger and the regional centres.
Please, would the Minister tell me how he expects the larger schools and the larger communities, and even in the smaller communities, according to my colleague from the Mackenzie Delta, how do you expect the schools and the DEAs to do this with no additional resources? I mean, providing money for a water-table and a sand-table, I’m sorry, it’s not going to cut it. It takes people and it takes specifically specialized, educated people to deliver the Junior Kindergarten program. That’s not going to work. It’s going to cost a lot of money and it’s going to do a lot of harm. I’d like to ask the Minister, how does he expect the DEAs to do more with less. Thank you.
Mahsi. Again, this Junior Kindergarten has been a topic of discussion for a number of years, even before I got on board as Education Minister in 2007. Through the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and also earlier engagement, that the pre-learning should be first and foremost a priority of this government. That’s why we laid down the early childhood development, the overall framework, the 10-year agreement. So this is an area that I feel will benefit the communities and the 23 communities that we service. We have the teachers here today being trained on the EDI, we have teachers that went through training programs last spring and last fall and it will continue with regional teachers as well.
So when it comes to the second phase for regional centres, such as Hay River, we need to seriously look at how we deliver JK in the 23 communities and what have we learned, the experience. At that time we may be in a different financial position, we don’t know at this point today. So we’ll continue to press that forward. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Hawkins.
