Debates of February 1, 2017 (day 45)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke earlier about junior kindergarten. I just have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I'm sorry to spring this on him, but I had to change my topic at the last minute.

I've heard varying numbers about what it's going to cost to implement junior kindergarten. I was wondering what's behind this disparity? There was a press release by the South Slave District Education Council that quoted a significantly higher number than the $2.7 million that Minister McLeod today said would top off funding for junior kindergarten, so I would like to hear from the Minister what is the number and what is the reason for these disparities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before the meetings that we had with all the board chairs and superintendents in December, there was a request for all our education authorities to come back and find money to help implement junior kindergarten. We've made an additional investment that brought the numbers down, so it is the 2.7 that we are looking for, thank you, just for confirmation.

This highlights the problem with this whole junior kindergarten debate. I'll go back to the boards, and they'll come back to me with a different number, and so it's just he said, she said, so it's going to take some digging here. I'm not saying the Minister isn't truthful. I'm just saying I'm getting different answers from different people.

So how will this $2.7 million roll out? Is it going to be $1.5 million the first year, $1.2 million the second year? Is there a plan for that yet?

As you heard in the Budget Address, we have that initial investment of $1.5 million this year, and then we will be rolling out the 2.7 before the end of the 18th Legislative Assembly.

In terms of some funding, that other funding, working with our education authorities, we do fund our education authorities $152 million every year. We've asked our education authorities to look within their budgets to find about 2 per cent to help offset the costs. We believe that the education authorities have the leadership, the fiscal management skills, and the financial flexibility to be able to cover the remaining costs. As I mentioned to the Member and as we sent out letters to community leadership, all our education authorities have an accumulated surplus of over $10 million, and we're also asking them to look within there, as well.

From what I understand from the boards, this surplus is to cover unexpected costs, make sure they have a payroll for, you know, a month or whatever may be, so how are they expected to dip into these rainyday funds to cover the cost of implementing junior kindergarten? It's a contingency fund. It's not an operating fund.

Schools will be making their own decisions regarding the details of the classes, the teachers, and the programs that best meet the needs of their students. As I mentioned, we believe that our education authorities have the leadership and the financial management skills. They do it on a regular annual basis when enrolments are low, that they were able to shift things around, and we believe that our school authorities have the tools to do that.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell the Minister has had to answer a lot of these junior kindergarten questions.

Laughter

My final question is: what about the capital costs associated with implementing junior kindergarten? Is that coming out of this $2.7 million, or is there additional money that ECE has that will cover the full capital costs of implementing this? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, we do have additional money specifically for the playbased learning resources as well as infrastructure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.