Mr. Bromley. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask some questions about the storefront schooling, alternative schooling for students. That may not be appropriately on this page. Would that come under funding to district education authorities on page 10-33 or would this be the time to ask about that?

Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. We’re under education and culture. I guess it could fall under the school. I’ll have to get my deputy to elaborate more in detail about the program.

Mr. Daniels.

I’m sure that the Minister and deputy minister are very well aware that there have been some questions raised recently with respect to the funding that has allowed these programs to exist in communities. I certainly know of Hay River and Fort Smith. I want to talk about Hay River’s.

There’s some question about whether or not it’s effective to fund the alternative schooling on a per student basis, considering that some of the students who are attending and taking advantage of this program are maybe only there to get a few credits in one grade to finish up and they attend at different rates and progress with their studies at different rates. Is it appropriate to fund alternative schools in the same way we would on a per capita, per student basis as we would a regular school?

Is it the department’s understanding from feedback from the district education authorities that this new formula for funding, this alternative schooling, is adequate or, in fact, is this new formula funding putting these programs in jeopardy and threatening them to not exist any longer because of this new funding? What’s the feedback been like from the DEAs who have these programs? What’s their response been to this new formula funding for them? Thank you.

What was the motivation or what precipitated the change in the funding program for the alternative schools? What brought that about and did, in fact, the funding under the new formula, is it reduced funding for alternative schooling? How does it compare to what was being provided? Thank you.

Would the deputy minister know, with the new formula, how much the funding for the storefront alternative school in Hay River, how much would that have gone down? Thank you.

As part of the consideration for reworking the funding of the alternative schools, what kind of consideration was given to the results that have been achieved? I understand that the students who attend the alternative schooling are ones who would not normally be attending the regular high school and this is a means of ensuring that those who may have dropped out who need credits, who need to learn in a different way, who need to achieve their high school diploma outside of that regular attendance at school Monday to Friday. Were the results taken into consideration when looking at the revised formula for funding?

In Hay River, that’s quite a significant decrease of $199,000 per school year for the alternative schooling program. What is the impact of that reduction of $200,000 a year? What’s

the impact going to be on that program in Hay River? Thank you.

Will there be any impact on the staffing level at the alternative school? Will this decrease of $200,000 impact their resources or their staffing in the next school year? Thank you.

Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to make a couple of comments and then I want to ask a question. Days run together and I don’t remember when I mentioned it, but I am a little concerned about the money that we’re spending on the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. I find no fault with the initiative, but when I attended the forum in Dettah a couple of weeks ago, my impression was that there are four priorities which the department has determined for the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. The impression I got was that the number one priority was early childhood and that the money would be invested in early childhood. Yet, when I look at the information that we got in the business plans in September, it tells me that the focus in the 2011-12 business year will be a literacy initiative. I have no problems with literacy but I am not quite understanding how, if I read this correctly, a literacy coordinator at headquarters and literacy coaching consultants in DEA and DEC offices, that will really assist us in terms of Aboriginal student achievement.

Some place else I thought I saw the establishment of libraries, which was also connected with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. I’d like a bit of an explanation from the Minister or from the deputy minister what the priorities for the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative are and what the focus of ASA funding in the 2011-2012 budget will be. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, as you

know, is still a working document. We are still visiting two more regions. There may have been a shift to focus on literacy for community library coordinator and libraries in the communities. It is based on the input that we received from the general public. We are moving forward on the recommendations. It is not us as a department saying this is what is good for the communities. Next year it could be in a different format. It could be early childhood that we need to focus on.

Mr. Chairman, once we started the initiative, we have identified what should be our priorities to discuss at the regional forum and we have had some feedback. That should be literacy, early childhood and family supports, and also language and culture. Those are four key areas that we have touched on, the student and family support.

As you see, the first priority is literacy. What we are doing here is focussing on literacy and then, following that, early childhood would come into play and student and family support, language and cultural preservation.

Mr. Chairman, as I stated, this ASA is still ongoing. There is a lot of work ahead of us still. Recommendations are still coming. We will continue to work with it and press it even more within our department. Mahsi.