Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I said earlier is teachers are trained to deal with different grade levels in the classroom. It has always been the case that a teacher who's teaching Grade 4 would have some kids who are reading at Grade 3 level and some kids would be at Grade 5 level. It's not unusual to have kids in a Grade 3/4 class reading at a Grade 2 or a Grade 6 level. Again, that's not unusual. It never has been.

What we often hear from teachers in the Northwest Territories is they see more of that in the classroom here than what you might find in classrooms in other jurisdictions. So what would it take to put a special needs assistant in every classroom? I can't tell you. But it would take money. It would take more money than what we are putting into supporting special needs right now. Yes, the decision is entirely with the DECs. They have to choose between classrooms of a certain size and a special needs assistant or perhaps different teachers. So they have to take a look at the number of dollars they get from us and then they make those decisions. It comes back to what Mr. Ramsay was saying earlier. You have different pupil/teacher ratios. So if you are funding at a ratio of 13 to one, they can run a classroom of 20 to 25 students and have special teachers that run programs for computers or that run gym classes only. Instead of having them all as teachers, they may choose to have more special needs assistants, so they could put a special needs assistant in every class. The boards are given that flexibility. So DECs have that flexibility within the funding that we provide them, but they are limited by the amount of funding that we give. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.