Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question to the Minister is around exclusive schooling but it’s more in line with the Member’s statement, the Member for Nunakput, in regard to students that have to go away from their home communities in which they have to attend a school in regional centres and are basically put in a situation that they have to go to home boarding. I know there was a hostel previously in Inuvik. But again, the whole idea of inclusive schooling was to have K to 12 in all the communities in the Northwest Territories.
I think the problem that we’re having with the system is based on the way that we allocate funding to the communities. I know that the divisional boards are responsible for allocating funding based on student-pupil ratios. Again, it does not work in small communities where you might have enrolment of, say, 60 students or 50 students, because the way the formula is set up it doesn’t really benefit the high school students. Basically, they’re put in a situation that they want to stay at home, they want the education at home, but
because they can’t, under the formula we have, allow students to have that opportunity for exclusive schooling in the communities such as Sachs Harbour or Tsiigehtchic.
I’d like to ask the Minister: have you looked at or considered the way the formula is being allocated so that communities that need those extra teachers in the community which is over and above the student-pupil ratio is going to require extra assistance so that they can find a new teacher or an additional teacher to deal with the high school students, but more importantly, because you don’t have the enrolment numbers you may not be able to meet the criteria that we use now? Is there a possibility of looking at that as an area that we can work with to assist communities that have the problem of having to send their students away to attend high school elsewhere? Is that something the department can look at?