Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Back to junior kindergarten again. I understand, and the Minister can correct me if I'm wrong, but in daycares and day homes, there needs to be a ratio of 8:1 when it comes to children to adults, supervisors. Yet, the four-year-olds who are being put into junior kindergarten, that ratio is going to be 12:1. What is the rationale for significantly reducing that ratio when it's essentially the same children that we're dealing with? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned earlier in one of the other questions, that JK will be delivered in the school setting. It's both practical as well as fiscally responsible. It also utilizes already maintained, inspected, and publicly funded available school space. Students that enter the junior kindergarten system will also have access to more support from the JK to 12 system that daycares don't have right now, and that was the rationale behind it.
The fact is, in the classroom or in the room that these children are in, there's going to be less supervision. Will the qualifications for a JK teacher be any different than our other elementary school teachers because we are dealing with an age with different challenges than any other age in the school system?
With the consultation that we've had with residents of the Northwest Territories as well as our school boards, we have made those changes to ensure that early childhood educators can be part of instructors within the JK system and doesn't necessarily have to have a degree. It's the flexibility of the school boards to determine whether the JK instructors can be an early childhood educator or have to have that degree in education.
I thank the Minister for clearing that up. About the capital upgrades, I brought this up before; I was looking for a dollar amount or a percentage amount. The Minister mentioned there's money for the upgrades needed to turn kindergarten or elementary classrooms into JK classrooms. What dollar amount is associated with the monies that ECE has pledged to support school boards with? Is it going to cover all of the capital upgrade costs, and if not, what percentage does it cover and what percentage will the school boards have to cover?
Currently we run junior kindergarten in 20 of our 33 communities. We did go out and do that inventory stock. We did the discussions with all the schools to look at what was needed. A lot of our schools have the utilization available; space, classroom space, that's available. Hay River is one that we do have low utilization rates in some of the schools. There are some infrastructure costs that are associated with implementing junior kindergarten. The number that we've looked at allocating is over $3 million, and that's for infrastructure needs as well as looking at resource materials that are needed for schools to implement junior kindergarten.
As I mentioned, out of the 33 communities there are 13 right now that we need to work with; work with our education authorities to look at the resources that are needed, plus any renovations that are needed, and that amount, the figure that I mentioned, was just over $3 million.
Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll be following up with the Minister to get some specific numbers for Hay River. Another issue is that in Hay River the buses are full; there's not room for another 30 kids. So is that factored into the funding for JK or is that something the school board is going to have to deal with either by cancelling busing or buying a school bus or some other means? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Just following up into answering another similar question earlier, that the department is working with the education authorities to address things such as busing, such as school safety and making sure that the implementation of junior kindergarten in all our communities is a smooth transition. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
