Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are following up on my Member’s statement directed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The Minister is reducing annual funding to Yellowknife school boards by hundreds of thousands of dollars each, starting in a few months.
What will be the total reductions for the next two years and what will be the amount reinstated in year three when Yellowknife’s junior kindergarten must begin? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of the process is, of course, rolling out the program in a three-phase approach. There will be 29 communities and the second year will be on to Hay River and the third year will be Yellowknife.
There’s Detah, Ndilo. So Detah will be $14,000 surplus for year one, they will be given the funding to operate. For Ndilo, $91,000 in year one to operate. YCS, the first year will be minus $434,000, year two will be minus $264,000, and year three will be plus $484,000. So a slight decrease of 1.2 percent of their overall budget, Mr. Speaker.
YK1, year one, $569,000 in the minus. Year two will be $322,000 minus. Year three will be $829,000 in the plus. That’s a difference of 0.3 percent of the overall budget decrease. So those are just the minor decreases that are happening over the three-year phased approach. Mahsi.
So, essentially they’ll be slightly less at the end of this time and, of course, the Minister forgot about the cost recovery programs that are in place that he’s requiring that they drop. So a net substantial loss. In the third year, obviously, with 120 extra people, small children to look after, they’ll be expected to provide junior kindergarten with no new funding in year three. This will be on the backs of services currently provided to our children, as I’ve mentioned.
What is the Minister’s assessment of the impact students will have to bear from this failure to provide new support for these new responsibilities? Mahsi.
Mahsi. The Yellowknife school boards have been offering the monthly fee-for-service four-year-old pre-kindergarten spaces beginning in 2008. So it has been operating for the past six years now, which has grown over the years. Currently, it would include approximately 163 licenced four-year-old spaces. So YK1 with a possible 90 fee-based four-year-old preschool space, bringing in revenue of approximately $600,000 per school year. Same with YCS, approximately $500,000 per school year on fee for service. So that will continue for the next two years and in the third year we will be providing them funding at that level.
As I stated, it is 1.2 percent for YCS, a decrease, and YK1 is 0.3 percent of their overall budget when you look at the territorial-wide budget and their budget as far as our contribution agreement. So there is a decrease, but we have to think long term as well. Mahsi.
Thank you. Indeed, we do need to think long term and I don’t believe the Minister is doing that. Obviously, these school boards are losing over $1.5 million over the next two years and then they’ll lose all of the revenue that they have from junior kindergarten currently in the third year, so they will be in a net deficit and yet huge new responsibilities that the Minister is asking them to take on. \What collaboration and support has the Minister experienced for this plan from our school boards? Mahsi.
Mahsi. I did mention in this House that there have been various meetings that took place since August 21st of 2013, September 18 and 19, 2013. These are with the superintendents of the school. November 27, 28, 2013, January 2014. These are ongoing discussions that we are currently having. There has been a recommendation brought forward by a superintendent to make adjustment to our approach of the PTR and we took that into consideration and instead of using 10 to Grade 12, they indicated that maybe we should try K to 12. So it does balance it out, all of the communities throughout the Northwest Territories.
We are listening to the school boards, we are listening to the superintendents and there are a lot of supports out there as well. Especially the small communities, the 29 communities, as I highlighted, there are 10 communities without any licenced programming for early childhood development. So, those are just some of the discussions we’ve been having. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re talking about Yellowknife here. I asked, what’s the Minister’s assessment of the impacts of this on the services to the students? No answer. He went off in a different direction. I asked what collaboration and support. I didn’t hear any collaboration and support. They’ve had meetings, dictatorial results.
Will the Minister commit to working with our school boards to provide the new investments required with these new responsibilities that he is asking of them? Mahsi.
Mahsi. When I highlighted all the dates, those are interactions that we are currently having in coordination with the school boards, with the superintendents. We’ll continue to do so because we have to work with the early childhood educators, as well, and the operators, the daycare operators. This is beneficial to all 33 communities. Yes, the Member is referring to Yellowknife, but we, as a government, are responsible for 33 communities. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
