Mr. Speaker, last week I informed the Assembly that officials from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment would be meeting with officials from the two Yellowknife education authorities to compare financial numbers about junior kindergarten. I would like to advise the Assembly of the results of those meetings because I think they confirmed that there is a lot of incorrect information floating around about junior kindergarten.
Mr. Speaker, there seems to be too much opinion and not enough facts about junior kindergarten, which is why I tabled a detailed fact package in the Assembly on Tuesday. I encourage all Members, parents and the public to look at it on the Department of Education, Culture and Employment’s website. Today I would like to highlight some of these facts because I am very concerned that we are forgetting how important and beneficial this program will be for children in every community in the Northwest Territories.
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the Yellowknife education authorities, like every other education authority, will help finance the implementation of junior kindergarten through re-profiled funds. Junior kindergarten will not be introduced in Yellowknife until 2016-17, so these two education authorities will see their budgets reduced in 2014-15 and 2015-16. However, as the fact package clearly shows, in 2016-17 both Yellowknife boards will get a significant injection of new money. This will come from two sources: their share of the reallocated junior kindergarten implementation dollars because they will start delivering junior kindergarten, and the new money that they will get because of the 16 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio commitment that I made in this Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, working with the officials from the two boards, we have identified maximum and minimum funding estimates for this new pupil-teacher ratio money based on two projected enrolment scenarios. I would like to confirm that Yellowknife Catholic Schools is projected to receive a budget increase in 2016-17 of between $580,000 and just
over $1 million dollars, depending on their student enrolment. Yellowknife Education District No. 1 is projected to receive a budget increase of between $1.14 million and $1.25 million in 2016-17. This important fact has been missing from the debate about how we are funding junior kindergarten in Yellowknife. I believe this makes a very powerful statement that Yellowknife is not being treated unfairly, as some people might have us believe.
Mr. Speaker, it has been said that the Northwest Territories has one of the worst pupil-teacher ratios in Canada. This is not true. Our territory-wide pupil-teacher ratio is 13.8 to 1, which is right on the Canadian average and comparable to most southern jurisdictions.
It has been said that we are not spending enough on kindergarten to Grade 12 education in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, the facts say something very different. The Northwest Territories is one of the best funded education systems in Canada. We spend just over $22,000 on every student, and the Canadian average is approximately $12,500 per student. We spend more than the other two territories and nearly double the Canadian average.
Mr. Speaker, it has been said that we are going to steal money from the dedicated Inclusive Schooling funding that assists students with unique needs. This is not true. Junior kindergarten implementation will not impact the approximately $26 million in Inclusive Schooling funding that education authorities receive for this purpose alone.
It has been said that I am forcing education authorities to spend their surpluses on junior kindergarten implementation. As I have already said in this Assembly, this is not true. It is up to them how they spend this pot of taxpayers’ money that was originally provided to them to deliver the best possible education program.
Mr. Speaker, we have even heard some people say that the junior kindergarten curriculum “lacks benefits for four-year-olds” and is “harmful to some aspects of child development.” This play-based curriculum was designed by professionals to be developmentally appropriate for both four- and five-year-old children. It was also built on the foundation of our cultural curricula, to help young children be confident and proud of who they are and where they come from.
Mr. Speaker, this is not a perfect world where resources are unlimited and there are no competing priorities. Our fiscal reality demands that the government exercise prudence and look at where it spends money, to see if it could do better by re-profiling some of it. Mr. Speaker, that is our duty as a responsible government and we did just that.
Some people might say that we should just wait and deliver junior kindergarten in a year or two,
when our fiscal situation might improve. But this overlooks the immediate benefit that junior kindergarten will have for four-year-olds in many of our small communities. Junior kindergarten is an investment in the future of our children. Delaying it doesn’t just defer the expenditure to another year, delaying it deprives our children of a chance to get the kind of support now that can give them lifelong advantages. Twenty-nine communities were given a choice whether or not to deliver junior kindergarten in 2014-15 and 23 communities have now said yes. We must deliver on that promise.
Mr. Speaker, change is often difficult and some people fear the unknown. But we should not lose sight of the most important fact that has remained throughout this debate: almost everyone supports junior kindergarten and agrees that it will help families across this territory. For some it will be the only child care option in their community. For others it will save the family up to $1,000 per month. Free, safe, optional, play-based junior kindergarten is simply the right thing to do for our children. At the end of the day, that is what really matters. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.