Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the deputy minister for her comments. I want to say that I am a little concerned that safe schools and anti-bullying are mentioned in the same breath and they seem to have the same focus. For me, safe schools or a safe schools plan or policy encompasses far more than just anti-bullying. In my mind, it should look at safe schools in terms of students, the safety of the students. It should look at the safety of the teachers and it should look at the safety of other staff within the school. Bullying is one aspect, but there certainly are other things which happen to make the workplace unsafe for teachers and which happen to make the school grounds and the environment itself unsafe for students.
I would strongly encourage the department, when they talk about safe schools, to look beyond bullying and look at all aspects of keeping a school safe. All users, all components of the whole school program should be considered in dealing with a safe schools policy.
I had one other question and it goes to the e-learning that Mr. Moses has talked about in the last week or so, but also in line with the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic project. It’s going to change hugely our access to data, our access to, sort of, technology and it will give us a much greater opportunity to have our students learn differently. I’d like to know, I guess, in terms of this renewal
that is being looked at, the whole education system is being looked at, with the fibre optic project coming on-line in 2016, if that is the time frame that I understand that we are looking at. We should be now, in my mind, looking at how we will deliver our learning, how we will deliver our programs, how we will deliver our teaching differently, and the e-learning project is one example of that. But what is the department doing within the renewal or the reform project to look three years down the road and change the way we provide our education to our kids to take full advantage of the fibre optic link when it’s up and running? Thank you.