Mr. Speaker, I'd like to talk about something that is a very important item to the small communities and that is the attendance of students K to 12. Absenteeism is very high in some of our small communities and I would like to recommend to the Minister -- not now, I'm not making a recommendation now, but in the future I recommend that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment start to collect data so that they could determine the level of absenteeism in all of the communities, but specifically in the small communities. We know that if a student misses one day of school per week, that's an 80 per cent attendance rate, then at the end of 12 years of school, or 13 with kindergarten, they would have missed two and a half years of schooling. I think those numbers do come out at the end of the day when people graduate from grade 12 and they've missed two and a half years of school, then it shows. They are at approximately a grade 10 level when they finish grade 12.
I think that one of the things that I'm going to do is that I will be discussing the rates of absenteeism and the attendance with the principals of the schools in Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh and see what they see as a solution. Previously, in one of the small communities, we had a breakfast program. Absenteeism was very high, attendance was down, and the breakfast program seemed to change that. A lot of students were starting to come in and have breakfast and then they were able to spend the entire day in the school, but that was discontinued because the cost was considered too high. I think that the cost is not too high, that we should have programs like that. But again, I wouldn't be standing here making a recommendation, but I would get the principals' opinions on how to get the classes in the seats, then present that to the Minister in another forum. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
