Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up with some more questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment because several things have been shared in the House since I asked my first questions, which create more questions.
The Minister referred to a survey that was being done. I would like to ask the Minister, will he table a copy of this survey in the House, and who exactly is being surveyed with respect to the Junior Kindergarten program rollout? Who is the survey for and what does the survey look like? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of the survey will be to find out what the 23 communities, if there is any major issues that we may have missed out on from the parents, from the community organizations, even as far as the regional centres and also Yellowknife, just to share their perspectives. We may have missed out on various key initiatives that they may bring to our attention. I want to hear from parents as well. Those are just some of the discussions that we had over the weekend, how can we best reach out to those communities, and that’s what we’re doing. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I was under the impression that there was already a survey that existed. So if the survey does not exist yet, I would like a comprehensive list of who is going to be surveyed and what the survey questions are going to be, because it’s all about the questions you ask in terms of the information that you get back in.
I would suggest that not only parents of Junior Kindergarten-aged children should be surveyed, I think we should survey other parents in the education system, because when we met with our DEA in Hay River, we saw them struggling over what they would cut out of the kindergarten to Grade 12 program in order to accommodate Junior Kindergarten. They were talking about things like they need to look at the busing program, for example. The Premier says that our DEAs and DECs are being over funded by the legislative standard by $17 million per year, but I would like the Minister or the Premier to sit in some of the meetings of some of these DEAs and watch how they struggle to cover the initiatives that this government mandates them with, things like inclusive schooling, for example, for which there is also inadequate funding.
I would like to ask the Minister of Education if he would inventory, in the 23 communities where he says Junior Kindergarten has already rolled out only for three months, would he inventory in those 23 communities exactly what preschool, early childhood development programs already exist and report that back to this House? Thank you.
Mahsi. That is exactly what we’re doing. My staff is currently meeting with YK1 and YCS, just through discussion on their overall budget as well. We are doing the same thing with South Slave school board as well. There are discretionary funds in there, as well, and there are various areas of funding that we found to be flexible. The flexibility is there that we can work with. At the end of the day, it is up to the school boards to decide if they can allow that to happen and so forth. My staff is diligently working with the school boards, whether it be Yellowknife and Hay River, Fort Smith, the South Slave district.
Yes, we’re doing the overall inventory of the 23 communities, and obviously, we need to identify what programs are currently in existence and we’ve done the research, as well, and we’ve provided all that information to the board chairs as well. Those are the discussions that we need to compile, as well, so I can share that with the Members of what we’ve compiled to date.
It is indeed confusing. At first I thought the Minister was saying that he was going to inventory the preschool programs in the communities, and now he says they’ve already done it. If he’s going to say he’s going to do it now, I was going to suggest wouldn’t that have been a good thing to do before you rolled out the Junior Kindergarten.
Anyway, the Minister last week referred to the specialized education that the teachers of children in early childhood development and Junior Kindergarten would require. The Minister indicated that that training had already taken place.
Again, could the Minister please tell me, in the 23 communities where Junior Kindergarten has already been rolled out, how many of those educators of those children have already received that specialized education?
I believe I did share that with the Assembly here. I’ll share that information again on the number of those individuals that were trained last spring and this past fall. That is continuous training with new staff that are coming on board, because we have to be prepared to deliver the qualified programming. It’s a curriculum base. It’s a play-based curriculum base, so we need to have those staff that are qualified to deliver that. There has been training that took place, so I will provide that list to the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t fully understand everything the Minister is telling us. I guess this is my final supplementary.
Are there educators teaching Junior Kindergarten in the 23 communities today who are not qualified to do so by way of an early childhood development specialized credential of some sort?
When it comes to delivering Junior Kindergarten in the 23 communities, obviously the teachers will be teaching our kids, our children in our school system, and the teachers go through various university degree programs, and part of the programming, of course, is early childhood as part of their degree program. We may not have a specific early childhood specialist teaching our kids in our school system, but we do have qualified teachers in our communities that are teaching our kids.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The time for question period time has expired. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m seeking unanimous consent to return to number five on orders of the day.
---Unanimous consent granted
