My questions today are also addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment as a follow-up on some questions I asked yesterday about the Minister’s statement and the JK fact sheets he tabled in the House, and also on the package of facts that he tabled in the House. At the outset, I want to advise the Minister that I ask these questions not just for Yellowknife schools and school districts but for all NWT school boards and schools because they are all affected by the changes ECE has proposed.
Portions of the Minister’s statement were very disturbing to me. He made much of the fact that Yellowknife school boards will receive an infusion of funds, but conveniently neglected to mention the amounts that are being removed from their budgets. The net impact on YK and regional centre school districts is negative and I would ask the Minister to confirm that. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My department met with the school boards and called every school board to identify what their financial situation will be with each and every school board. Mahsi.
I guess I have to assume, since the Minister isn’t answering my question, that the answer to my question is yes, it’s a negative impact on school boards. Using numbers from the department itself, numbers that have been agreed to by school districts and also Education, Culture and Employment, Yellowknife Catholic Schools will see a reduction in their budget as follows: $277,000 in year one; $744,000 in year two; $1.137 million in year three. In year three, as the Minister stated yesterday, they will get funding for junior kindergarten of $960,000. The end result is a budget reduction of $177,000. Add in the one-time top up to keep PTR at 16 to 1, which the Minister and the school boards agree with, the net result is a budget increase of $580,000. The Minister left out the revenue losses that Yellowknife Catholic Schools will face, unfortunately. If you add in those revenue losses from the preschool program that they run, and I forget what the other one is, the net result is a deficit of $436,000.
I would like to ask the Minister, does he agree with me that this one school board, as an example, will suffer a considerable hit to their budget?
What the Member is referring to is revenue generation through business. That was at the discretion of the school board to decide a few years back to offer…now it will be called JK, junior kindergarten. So, obviously, again, it will be up to the parents to decide. The school board has two years to decide on that. So, Mr. Speaker, those are the discussions that we’ve had both with YK1 and YCS and NWT school boards on these implications. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
To the Minister, yes, they are numbers, but they are numbers that have been agreed to by the department and the school board. I made mention yesterday of some conflicting statements in the fact sheets. I need to ask the Minister again the same questions to clarify what his answer was and which one of the statements in the fact sheets is correct.
When a district implements a junior kindergarten program in the fall of 2014, for example, and it would not be in Yellowknife but one of our small communities, will the school district that is running that program receive funding for those new JK students in the year the program starts or a year later as is the usual practice now according to the school funding formula? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as has been indicated in this House, the PTR funding has been re-profiled across the Northwest Territories on a three-year phased approach. If an individual community is delivering the programming to the community and there’s a surplus of students that accidentally show up, those students would be identified through extraordinary funding through my department, my shop. We would provide that to the school board and it would be up to school board, at their discretion, if they’re going to hire an additional teacher or not, based on the funding we provide to them, based on the number of student enrolment. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure if the Minister didn’t understand my question or if he’s trying to avoid answering it. I was not talking about extraordinary funding; I was talking about junior kindergarten students starting a program.
The Minister spoke yesterday about per student funding and he mentioned that as the NWT, compared to Canada, we get a great deal more. We do fund our school districts better than the provinces, but we are very close to the funding announced for our sister territories, which you omitted to mention.
In looking at the fact sheet, it looks like the per student amount includes capital funding dollars. If that’s the case, it’s no wonder our number is higher. Apart from having higher operating costs in the North, we certainly have higher costs to build in the North.
Can the Minister please tell me if the $22,000 per student figure that he quoted yesterday includes capital as well as O and M dollars? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as I stated in this House, the $22,000 per student is one of the best in the country and we will continue to be proud of that and we will continue to invest even more in those areas. However we justify the number, we’re the best in the country. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
