Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. We have a lot of university students who are still in NWT residence who are currently living outside the Northwest Territories to attend post-secondary. I am wondering how the Minister of education and his department are communicating with students whose schools may have closed and gone to online courses and who want to come home? How are they communicating their options with them? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is an ever-evolving situation. When I was looking at the news on Friday, it was changing right before my eyes. A few schools were closing their doors, but most were moving online, as the Member said, so classes aren't necessarily cancelled. Courses have moved online.
A lot of universities are also keeping their facilities, their resources open, like libraries, and so students might make the choice to stay down and finish their semester there because they need access to those types of resources. That being said, some who have the ability to complete their entire courses online might want to come back home. We haven't communicated that to them yet, seeing as how this happened over the weekend and everyone has been working full-out, but we will have that communication with them. Students who want to return home early, depending on the status of their post-secondary education, we will work with them to provide their travel home funds at an earlier date so they can get home. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In the case where students are expected or end up coming home, because this is progressing quickly and we don't know where we are going to be at the end of the week, if students do end up coming home early, will the department of education be looking at what they can do for students in the event that students end up with an incomplete for the year but are still on the line for student loans?
Like I said, it is still pretty early here, but if students make the decision to come home and complete their courses online, I would imagine they would be expected to complete their courses online; but, like I said, it is an evolving situation and perhaps there are going to be situations where the online delivery doesn't quite work as well as it was expected, considering that some schools are throwing this together over the weekend. A mass of universities are trying to pull this off over the weekend. I am open to doing what we can to ensure people aren't adversely affected by this pandemic, but I can't make any guarantees at this point, given that things are still new and we have so little information.
I appreciated the question from my colleague from Inuvik Twin Lakes in regard to daycares and day homes to the Minister of Health and Social Services, and I understand that it is the responsibility of the Chief Medical Health Officer to close day homes, but I received a concerned phone call yesterday from a constituent whose day home provider in a private residence was coming back from travel and not anticipating self-isolating in her home. In that case, how is the Department of Education, Culture and Employment communicating what it means to self-isolate and who is responsible for self-isolating to day home providers?
The communication about self-isolating and about the precautions that need to be taken has been happening, I believe, since January, was the first time that the department reached out, and I will ensure that those continue to happen. Similar to the schools, I don't have the authority to close day homes, as it is being done in other jurisdictions, but if there is a serious health concern, the Chief Public Health Officer likely has the ability to close that. If people do have concerns about what is going on, they should be bringing those forward.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. In regard to the Premier's comments earlier today in regard to closing schools until after Easter, does that mean that the end of the school year for NWT students will move and will be prolonged a little bit more into the summer to make up that time? Thank you.
What the Premier said was that I consulted with the Chief Public Health Officer and received advice to close NWT schools until after Easter. That is advice. I don't have the authority to close those schools.
I have a meeting today with the chairs of the DEAs and the DECs, and they are the ones with that authority. Our recommendation will be to follow the advice of the chief medical officer, which is to close schools until after Easter. What that means, we are not sure yet. We will see where we are at that point and then re-evaluate, but there are a number of options on what can happen.
In the South Slave, they haven't had spring break yet. Perhaps they just don't have a spring break and they finish early. There are things like what happened in Alberta, where they cancelled school until basically next September, so it is still too early to know what is going on, but I can tell the Members of this House that it is my desire to continue educating children even in light of the physical closures of schools. I don't want to just abandon this school year. I want to ensure that our grads, people who can graduate, are able to graduate, and I want to ensure that we don't allow our students to fall further behind by just giving up on their education for the rest of this year.
What that looks like, I am not sure. The staff in the department have been working with the NWT Teachers' Association, have been working with the superintendents and the school boards to try and figure out how we can continue delivering education in light of these closures. That is where we are right now, and this recommendation came in a few hours ago, so the plans are still in the process of being made. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
