Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and they are based on a statement that he gave today. I just want to confirm, to start with, that the provision of JK in every school in the Northwest Territories is mandatory as of September of this year. Is that correct? Thank you.
Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are intending to roll out junior kindergarten in all the schools across the Northwest Territories this fall school year. I just want to emphasize again that it is optional for parents and families to enrol their kids. Thank you.
School boards are now developing their budgets for the next school year. One of the tasks that they have is to decide on their staffing component. If they are going to release teachers, they need to be released by the end of March. If they need to hire teachers, they need to know that as well. If the money is not going to be available until the fall, how are school boards going to plan for the implementation of junior kindergarten this fall?
As I mentioned, it is a really good news story that this government has stepped up to fully fund junior kindergarten. The next step, after we made the announcement from the budget address, was that our department is meeting with superintendents and working with the school boards to look at how we're going to be rolling out junior kindergarten this fall, and also looking at how we're going to be able to utilize that money that was announced in the budget.
I did not hear a definitive answer to my question. So schools are now planning. School boards in Yellowknife are holding open houses this month to talk to parents about coming to their schools to access junior kindergarten, and they have a target number of involvements in mind for each of the school boards, so there are lots of pieces of this puzzle that are known. So can the boards count on having this funding in hand or committed to the penny by the end of March?
As I mentioned after the Budget Address, we did reach out to the superintendents and we're working with the school boards to see how we're going to roll out this funding, and we did make that commitment to fully fund junior kindergarten, so those are discussions that are happening right now.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to making sure that all the money is in place to fund junior kindergarten in every NWT school by the end of March? Thank you.
Based on enrolments and how many students are going to be in the school system, we are going to be fully funding junior kindergarten this fall. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
