Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, my questions are to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I’ll try and be very, very clear. I know that if the public is watching, it may get a little bit hard to follow at times because there are so many different programs out there funded in so many different ways. I guess what the common denominator is, is that if Junior Kindergarten proceeds, it’s going to pull four-year-olds out of a program, which is a significant removal from any program that’s already out there, existing and successful. I think the Aboriginal Head Start program is one very prime example of an early childhood development program that’s been around for many years, proven, funded by the federal government, and when we move the four-year-olds because the Government of the Northwest Territories all of a sudden says, oh no, we’re taking on responsibility for early childhood development for those four-year-olds, and to pool resources, it gets complicated.
I’d like to ask the Minister of Education, how much thought, analysis, consultation into the impact of removing four-year-olds from all early childhood facilities in our communities and programs went into the initiative to roll out Junior Kindergarten. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When it comes down to meeting with the general public, the stakeholders, as I stated in this House on numerous occasions, there’s been a lot of discussion that took place at the regional level. That was part of the process, as well, with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and now we’re talking about the Early Childhood Development Framework. That’s a 10-year agreement that’s before us. Part of that process, obviously, is engaging the daycares, the home operators in the communities on how, if there’s going to be an impact on them, we work with them because we provide subsidies to them.
There have been numerous discussions that have taken place and we continue to do so. We have to re-evaluate our stance, as well, on delivering in the 23 communities. So, we will continue to make that a priority and engage the general public as well.
The Minister refers to very, very broad initiatives like the Aboriginal Achievement Initiative. These are laudable and good goals to have, Aboriginal achievement, but when it gets down to the details about how we achieve that, there has to be more analysis than talking to people and consulting people at a regional level. We need to know what is on the ground; we need to identify what is already going on in every community. Every community is different, every community has a different level of resources already being dedicated to early childhood development. So it needs to be on a community-by-community basis, not on a regional level.
What work did the department do community by community to identify what was already in the communities in consideration of the Junior Kindergarten initiative? Thank you.
Mahsi. Throughout our engagement with the communities, a list of dates have been identified, such as developing a response team that’s made up of regional representatives, early childhood development consultants, ECE superintendents and also the departmental headquarters, as well, when it comes to dealing with the small communities.
At the beginning of the 2014-15 school year, all JK students were given information as well. Since we’ve been discussing the rollout of Junior Kindergarten in 23 communities, since September 26th to 27th, we hosted a forum, a symposium and had the educators come into Yellowknife. There have been approximately 75 operators.
September 30th was the NWTTA conference. That was another 900 or so teachers that came and they had a lot of social interaction in that respect.
October 13th to 17th is another one that the ECE director of early childhood development and learning division has called each of the communities to provide more detailed information.
So, there are lists of information that I will be sharing with the Members. Mahsi.
Thank you for that long list of symposiums and forums and meetings that the department engaged in, but consultation is a two-way street. Sure, the department may have been telling educators and telling people who run daycares and telling people that are in this line of work what their vision of Junior Kindergarten was. I understand that we were telling them. I’d like to ask the Minister, what were they telling us? Thank you.
Mahsi. Part of the engagement with the educators, we want to hear their perspective, as well, because they’re the ones who are delivering Junior Kindergarten to our communities, the 23 communities that we are currently delivering Junior Kindergarten and hearing their perspectives. Just recently I met with my department. Why couldn’t we have a survey done in the communities, as well, because we’re into three months of Junior Kindergarten being delivered in our communities and we haven’t heard much from the 23 communities. So, I as the Minister responsible want to hear their perspectives. Not only that, but from the regional perspective and also Yellowknife. So, I’m looking forward to those types of discussions coming my way. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s interesting that the department and the Minister are not hearing what the concerns are because we, as MLAs, are certainly hearing them and the responses that we are getting are completely understandable. We hear from people. I know this is supposed to be a short supplementary – I could stand here all day on this topic – so let me just go and ask the Minister a final question.
How much analysis went into the cost of adding Junior Kindergarten to existing schools on a community-by-community basis? Because when we, as the Standing Committee on Social Programs, heard about this initiative, we thought, wow, where’s the money, a question that we never got an answer to and neither have the DEAs and DECs.
I’d like to know, where is the analysis on the cost of something like this? I say the money is not there and that’s one more reason why it’s not going to succeed. Thank you.
When we first decided to roll out the Junior Kindergarten, obviously there was a discussion at the board level. I met with the board chairs back in 2013, in October, and introduced the JK. At that time we were talking about the cost factor, how much it was going to cost us. Obviously, throughout the time, we talked about how we were going to subsidize the JK as we move forward. We said, well, there’s $150 million going to the school boards already, how can we best utilize that funding to get the best results? Those are the discussions that we’ve had with the 23 communities that will be delivering Junior Kindergarten, working with the board chairs as well.
So, there has been a lot of analysis done on this particular JK delivery, and we just learned from Quebec, as well, that the universal daycare is not really working well for them. Now they’re turning their focus on junior kindergarten for the province of Quebec. So, we are learning best practices from other jurisdictions as well.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
