Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I had questions for the Minister of Education on junior kindergarten. I want to follow up with some questions about the funding for other programs that are going to be affected by junior kindergarten.
Has the Department of Education looked into the effects of taking four-year-olds out of the systems we have? I’ll use Hay River as an example, obviously. We have a playschool, we have Growing Together and we have a Head Start program. These are programs that are affected by that, so I’m wondering if the department has looked into the effect of the enrolment in those departments by introducing junior kindergarten.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
The introduction of junior kindergarten this fall, the following year in Hay River is not meant to replace other high quality programming being delivered in Hay River, playschool or Head Start programming. We are providing families of the NWT with a high quality, affordable education option for four-year-olds.
The early childhood program continues to provide ongoing funding through all these licenced daycares and family day homes, as Members alluded to earlier. This also addresses where we have different pots of funding that I’ve highlighted in the House, I believe it was last week or the week before. Language Nest funding like the Small Communities Initiative, some Small Communities Initiative funding, Healthy Children Initiative funding. Part of the funding that we provide to licenced child care programming or licenced daycare programming is to offset the costs of operating, whether it be the day home or the licenced operators. We will continue to provide that funding to these establishments.
I guess the issue is if those organizations don’t have four-year-olds, are they funded per capita or per student? How will they continue to exist? Will the enrolments be so declined that they will not be able to operate? Has the department looked at that enrolment and do they fund per student?
We made some changes to our early childhood programming and then based on the student attendance and the reporting mechanism and so forth. We’re trying to make it easier for the licenced operators to function effectively and efficiently. Yes, my department, again, is working very closely with operators in the Northwest Territories, not only Hay River but other communities that have four-year-olds going into the school system, because we’re fully aware that the planned focus will be zero to three, so that’s the planned target. We’re doing what we can to subsidize them with all the program subsidizations that we currently offer.
I’ve received information from one of the organizations, the Head Start program, that basically they had been informed that they are now a zero to three not a three/four, and I guess they’re quite disturbed in the fact that they have been running this for over 20 years. They were asked to realign after the Department of Education has done that.
How can the Minister justify that we’re changing the focus to zero to three when these organizations were established to do three to four?
Early childhood consultants have been working with the operators throughout the Northwest Territories. We will continue to do so. These are just some of the areas that have been in discussion with the operators. We’re offering a free junior kindergarten to the Northwest Territories and allowing more focus on the zero to three as we move forward this fall, the following year and also the third year phased approach. The free junior kindergarten has been offered as a free basis. It has been a fee-for-service in some of the communities. This is an opportunity for those individuals, the parents, the single parents that cannot afford junior kindergarten.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my experience, nothing is free in this world. The point is that the funding for the junior kindergarten is going to be from within and now it’s affecting other organizations, other communities that have Head Start programs. My concern is that these Head Start programs and other organizations will fail. I’m just wondering: Has the department completely assessed this in their plan to launch junior kindergarten both in the small communities and in the larger centres?
This junior kindergarten is not new to us. We’ve been engaging the general public since the early start of the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, the early childhood development, the framework itself now, engaging education renewal and innovation. There has been a lot of discussion pertaining to this, and yes, there is going to be an evaluation of what’s needed at the community with those operators, what kind of subsidies will be required, and we will continue to subsidize them. We will continue to strengthen that. We don’t want to see operators losing out. Those are just some of the discussions and our early childhood consultants are working very closely with the operators.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Nadli.
