Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is obvious that it is not good enough for us to speak about the increases in funding that we have been able to give. While it is good, obviously it is not good enough. Maybe the situation was so bad that the improvement we have made has not caught up to the standard we would like to see in our schools.

Let me ask a question, and I have asked this question before in the House. In the pamphlet the department has put out to explain, called Understanding the Pupil-Teacher Ratio, it says in the definition of pupil-teacher ratio that aboriginal language, cultural specialists, teaching assistants and school community counsellors are not counted as part of the PTR.

Maybe we have to look at what is counted and what is not. We use PTR, which I understand is a formula used in all schools in Canada, but I do not think there is any real rhyme or reason as to why. Why I did not include it so the boards are forced to fund these positions, but they are not funded under PTR. However, they still need teaching assistants, heaven knows. We all know every school needs more teaching assistants.

I do not think the problem is about having big class sizes but having more than one teacher.

What I see in Range Lake North School, and I know it is common in other schools in Yellowknife and throughout the Territories, is that there are a lot of combined classes, grades 4 to 5, 2 to 3. I am sure in communities, you have a wider range of grades that have been combined. I do not think anybody is experiencing a problem of having one teacher and two assistants or anything like that. We are still experiencing too many kids for a teacher.

If the additional funding that we are giving is not accomplishing the result then maybe we should look at what positions are necessary that we are not funding now that we should be funding. Is that something the department has ever considered? Is that something we can look at? Is that something the Social Programs Committee could look at?

Thank you. I will ask Dr. Foley to answer that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have heard that. I have heard that the territorial Assembly and the Department of Education, Culture and Employment have been giving more money than ever before, and the way the money is spent is up to the school boards. However, we are funding with a formula that is not working.

It is really irrelevant to me who is responsible for how that money is spent. What is relevant to us, and we have to all be responsible, including the Minister, deputy minister, all of the staff of the government department and everyone in the local boards, what is important is what is going on in the classroom.

I could go and say it is up to the school board but the bottom line is it is the kids. There are just too many kids in the classrooms. Obviously, this PTR ratio is not working.

Regardless of what they are doing in the rest of the country, regardless of what this PTR was meant to be and how it always has been, can we not revisit this and say okay, we need cultural specialists, we need aboriginal language specialists, we certainly need teaching assistants. We need a lot more than we have now and their position is being funded by teachers' money, so why can we not fund these separately?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to respect the people who are the experts in this whole area. We have a school program and resource committee. It is made up of educators. It is made up of representatives from all the DEAs. Additionally, we have a process of input from the teachers along the way.

The Territorial Teachers' Association was very concerned with how to address this issue. They are the ones that made the recommendation to us on how to address the issue of more support in the classrooms. We followed that, Mr. Chairman.

We have brought down the PTR, which is very measurable, so it has to have an affect in the classroom, Mr. Chairman. We are now almost investing an extra $12 million per year over when we started. That is in a period of two-and-a-half years. It has to have an affect, Mr. Chairman. It is obvious. Statistically, we are showing it.

Is that solving a particular problem in a particular school? There is no doubt there have been improvements in that school as well. When we consider the PTR is an overall ratio and it takes in the classroom teachers, support teachers, vice principals and principals, what we have to remember in addition to that is that we have other people in that classroom, many other people. There are specialists, language specialists, or classroom assistants. They are not counted in the PTR. When we consider, and if we do a comparison between our jurisdiction and other jurisdictions, I know that nationally, we are coming down to the national rate. We are still above some but we are coming down. We need to continue that effort.

The question Ms. Lee has is can we take the money that we are putting into the specialist area, the classroom assistants, the language specialists and so forth, I think the thrust has been to do it on both levels, both on the PTR and the student support area. The next question in this whole thing is can we look at class sizes? We do because we work in partnership, from the ground up, with our jurisdictions to provide advice in that whole area and support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Page 9-19, education and culture, grants and contributions. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I realize the Minister has to get the advice from the experts in program services, but what about the experts in the parents' advisory group? What about the parents who come and talk to us all the time about how the number of students per teacher is not diminishing, in spite of the fact that we keep repeating to them that we have been approving extra money.

I know for a fact the Minister just received a letter recently from the N.J. MacPherson School Parents Advisory Group. The response the Minister gave was copied to every parents advisory group. He reiterated the formula.

My point is that, I do not want to be rude about it, but I really do not care how we compare to the national average or what the experts in the department are saying. I really do not think that matters. I do not really care that it is up to the local boards to do it. I really think that we are responsible for how our money is being spent and how the money we are giving is translated in the classroom.

I am sure the Minister has statistics that show the classroom has decreased, but I tell you, I was at a parents advisory group meeting about three weeks ago and my information is that the problem is as bad and as serious as ever. I really believe that unless we open up this PTR and revisit it and include some of the positions that we are not funding, such as a librarian position. How could you not fund that? How could you have a school without a librarian?

Let me just repeat that. I do not think there should be a school without a librarian. I think that should be a necessary, funded position. School boards have to make a choice about whether they should have a physical education specialist position. Those are important.

I know the Minister has done a lot to give extra money, but can we not stop saying that we are doing the best we can and it is up to the school boards? The bottom line is every single school in Yellowknife is overcrowded -- every school.

I do not know. I have to be able to give the parents a better answer than say it is not our responsibility, it is the school boards'. The school boards will say they are doing the best with the money they have. I have no reason not to believe that, but how does that answer about what the reality is in the school classroom? I think that is the most important issue here.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Ootes.

I did not hear a question there, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Ms. Lee.

You know, I hear from my colleagues in the House that was a really good question, except the Minister did not hear it and I do not know what I said, so...

-- Laughter

I am sure it was really good, but I cannot exactly repeat it. I do not know. Maybe the Minister could read the Hansard and get back to me.

I have another question. Mr. Chairman, I also asked a question in the House about student support funding. We are also aware that we have been able to increase funding in that area as well, which is a good thing, due to the low enrolment. That is another thing. We have had less students going into the school system but we still have crowded classrooms. Somebody should go and look into this. The experts in education should take a look at what is going on. We give more money and there is less enrolment but class sizes are as big as ever.

It is just like the population in the NWT. We see more people, but where are they? It is reversed.

Anyway, this student support funding, I asked the Minister to give me information about what criteria is used in the way the school boards spend student support money. I have been given a sheet that tells the details of expenditures that the school board has to file with the department. It is only a page long. There are about 15 columns. I cannot believe the school boards get millions of dollars from the department on student support services and have to fill out a form that is less than what you would have to fill out to get a $3,000 loan.

What I am trying to get at is we all know about the special educational needs in our school systems. Could we not expect more from the department in terms of accountability of how the money is being spent, and if it is reaching the objective that we are trying to get to, which is to provide help that is needed for those students with special needs. I do not know if the Minister is aware of this, but it is just a little form that says education body, details of expenditures.

Let me ask a direct question. What does the department do to measure whether or not the extra money that you are giving to the school boards for student support services to measure how that is spent in terms of how it benefits the kids? What is used there?

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do have an accountability framework that we work with. As well, there is an annual accounting report back to the department for each district to account for the funding, what was spent in what categories, and there are a number of categories. If the Member is interested, we can certainly provide some details on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister is correct in saying there are a number of items that the department asks the school boards, such as salaries. These are the things the department asks for: salaries, employee benefits, services purchased, contracts, including professional technical services, postage, communication, utilities, travel, student travel, advertising, printing, publishing, maintenance, repair, rentals, leases, other contracted services, materials, supplies, freight, and contributions in transfers. That is an accounting book. That is I give you $100 dollars and how are you spending the $100?

I think the questions the parents with kids with special needs want to know are questions like, is there a policy in place to ensure a trained aid is matched with a child's special needs? Is there a database listing training courses and experiences aids and teachers have? Is there any long-term planning associated with a child expected to be enrolled in the district for several years? Is there a database that says how many kids in our system, in your school board, have been assessed to be in need of special needs? What is the level of their needs? How many special-ed assistants do you need to meet those needs? How much money do you have? If you need a hundred positions, do you have money for 80 positions? Are you meeting the top 80 students whose needs...you know, I really do not care how much money they spend on -- I guess I should care, but you know, this is an accounting ledger. What about the quality? I really would like to see this as notice to the department that if we really are, and I know we are concerned. We hear it all the time about increasing the number of kids in our school system that need special attention. If we really are going to make a difference we have to know what our problems are. The accountability has to be about what difference we are making, not about in what column this ledger goes.

I expect that I will not get an answer to this today, but I hope that the next time we meet, maybe sooner than that, we will get better answers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two years ago, we did a student needs support assessment. We covered every school in the Territories, kindergarten to grade 9, and a collective sampling of 10 to 12 students, to look at what the needs were in the various schools. From that, we developed a report, Mr. Chairman, and extensive work was done on it to identify the kind of support that was needed. We are following the investment with that information.

We know that by putting out money into, for example, increasing student...pardon me, it is getting late here, Mr. Chairman. Support for teachers in the classroom was one area. Training was the other area and home support was another area, staff development...those were all areas that were very important in the student needs support area. Counselling and healing was another. Student counsellors, school and community counsellors...there has been extensive work done on the whole area of what support is needed in the classroom.

I think the student needs support survey did a fairly good job on that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. We are on page 9-21, contributions, $106,983,000. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, when the Standing Committee on Social Programs was reviewing the draft mains with the Minister and the department, we had a significant amount of discussion with the Minister about the problems that day care operators were having with running their operations in the North. It is not just a situation where they are running into fiscal problems because the subsidies are not enough. It is a problem because they are often run by volunteers who sometimes do not have specialized training. We thought that it would be probably beneficial if the operators could gain access to better supports.

I would like to note that earlier this session, I asked the Minister if he would commit to providing a board training package. I have received a letter from him confirming that by this fall, ECE and MACA will have a board training and support program that will be available for board members to call on to help them develop, to help them with planning their financial resources and so on.

One of the areas that we also saw as being important was not just in terms of support to board members, but support that the board members or the operators could call on a regular basis when they ran into problems. This means better resources at the regional centres, at headquarters, so the people in the centres could pick up the phone, call and get some assistance when they wanted some advice, or they could call and they could have somebody come out and help them when they had problems.

Therefore, the committee would like to present a motion. Mr. Chairman,