Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Mr. Speaker, school boards currently do a pointintime count on September 30th of every year for student enrolment. This pointintime count includes specifications for additional funding like special support needs of individual students. Unfortunately, this pointintime count is not reflected in the school board's funding until 13 months later in the following school year. This makes serving the needs of existing students quite difficult for school boards.
So I'm wondering, can the Minister explain why funding is not delivered in the current school year to address the needs of existing student populations? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for ECE.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Part of the reason is to ensure that there is some stability, some consistency, and some certainty for education bodies. They will know what their budget will be in the next year based on the numbers from the current year. As well, we need to line up with the GNWT fiscal year. So these numbers need to get into this budget, and that process is largely finalized by December. So those are the primary reasons. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it appears that this piece of kind of the GNWT funding or funding requirements are placing some unnecessary strain on the operational budget of some of our school boards, especially with changes that have happened in the last few years, or changes that can happen from year to year.
So while a pointintime count is done on September 30th, the policy that guides that states that children must be present for 50 percent or more of the month. In other jurisdictions, the pointintime count does not stipulate attendance and looks only at student enrolment on September 30th.
Is the Minister willing to remove the 50 percent attendance stipulation from the policy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So attendance for the month of September is taken based on 60 percent of the sessional days in that month. Excused absences are included as an attending student. So if there's a legitimate reason why a student is not there, those are included as the student being in attendance.
There is always tweaks to the funding framework that happen, basically, yearly. An ongoing discussion that we have with the education bodies, and I'm happy to have that conversation about this particular item as well. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that correction from the 50 to 60 percent as well.
School boards have indicated that COVIDrelated school closures and on the land absences can have an impact on school attendance as counted for student enrolment. So I'm wondering if the Minister can speak to kind of what provisions are in place to make sure that either COVID school closures that had students out of the classroom, or on the land experiences and absences, are somehow accounted for to make sure that school boards are not penalized for encouraging students to partake in on the land activities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If a school is closed due to COVID and there's no students attending, then those students aren't marked as absent so it doesn't count against those numbers. And in terms of being out on the land, if a student is out on the land with their family, they're hunting, that can be considered an excused absence because we recognize how important that is. There may be instances where this isn't recorded properly; it falls through the cracks. But that is our policy. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to say thank you to the Minister and both his deputy minister, who were willing to have a meeting about this at 6:30 this morning, to try and so I could learn some more about it and so I can say that they are very receptive to talking about it.
But given that, and given the importance of making sure that our school operations are properly funded for the students that are currently in our schools, will the Minister commit to following up with school boards to have a conversation about this policy and how it can be further tweaked? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is the regular work of the department. There's ongoing conversations, sometimes specific to this, this exact issue, sometimes peripheral to it that will inform the issue, so this is just what happens on a regular basis. And I will also say that school boards do have a surplus that they're allowed to maintain. It can't be greater than 7 percent but that is only to ensure that money is actually being spent on students. But school boards do have surpluses for instances where they are finding themselves short on funds. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
