Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier and I want to follow up on some questions that my colleague Mr. Dolynny asked earlier following up on the statement of the Premier today. I want to, at the outset, indicate that I am very pleased and was pleased to hear the statement from the Premier. It is good news. But one of the things Mr. Dolynny asked had to do with funding and the funding ongoing. The Premier indicated in one of his answers that there were funding reductions for education authorities in this fiscal year, 2014-15, that there would be reductions in 2015-16 and there would be reductions in 2016-17. If phase two and three of the Junior Kindergarten program is not going to be happening, I need to get confirmed from the Premier whether or not there will be reductions to education authorities in 2015-16 and 2016-17. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in the letter, I said the funding model would remain the same for years one and two, which is 2015-16 and 2016-17. The reason for that is we have 23 communities that have implemented Junior Kindergarten. As the Members have requested that we review that immediately and so we have to determine how many of those will no longer participate in the Junior Kindergarten program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Premier for clarifying that. It doesn’t make me happy, however. We are now targeting regional centres’ education authorities and Yellowknife education authorities in a second year for a program which presumably is fully funded in this first year. We have 23 communities now ongoing for Junior Kindergarten. We had reductions from education authorities to fund the first year and the reduction in the second year was supposed to fund the second year, from what I understand.
The other concern that I have is that this funding is only coming from authorities who have schools greater than 120 students. So we are totally targeting larger schools and larger authorities. Is that correct, that we will be doing reductions in 2015-16 from education authorities who will get nothing for at least another two or three years? Thank you.
As I’ve indicated in my previous responses, we will be re-profiling from all authorities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I don’t think I heard an answer to my question, so I guess school boards are looking forward to reductions in 2015-16 and they aren’t going to get anything back for at least another two or three years.
The Premier referenced surpluses and he referenced the need for particularly the two boards in Yellowknife to use up their surpluses. There are other boards with surpluses. I’d like to ask the Premier if the need to use up surplus to deal with the funding shortfall because of the reductions that are happening, is the need to use up surpluses the same for every education authority or is he looking specifically at Yellowknife? Thank you.
As I said, we would have to revisit it depending on how many of the 23 communities determine that they will not be continuing with Junior Kindergarten. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s hard to be short when I get an answer that doesn’t reference my question. The Premier says that all the schools are over-funded. Our legislation says our PTR is 16 to 1. I want to say that the only schools which are meeting that 16 to 1 PTR are in Yellowknife. I would like to know whether or not the Premier intends to enforce or reduce dollars so that we are 16 to 1. Is he going to enforce a ratio of 16 to 1 in every school across the territory? We now have some that are funded at less than 5 to 1. Thank you.
We’re hearing that we have to adhere to our legislation. Obviously, as a government, we take that very seriously. We’ve indicated that we are doing a very comprehensive review and I think we would revisit it at that time. So we expect the review will take a period of time, but I’ve written to committee and indicated that we will seek input from every MLA on how this review should work, so that everybody will have input into it. Everybody, at the end of the day, will be happy with the outcome of the review. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
