Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to introduce to you and through you a number of people. Some of them have been introduced here today but I think I need to re-emphasize that. From Range Lake we have Mr. Mike Huvenaars, superintendent, and on the floor of the House here we have Page Sommer Snow, who is with us here. I would like to thank all the Pages. They have done a good job this week. Of course, our students, as indicated, our proceedings go a lot better with our students here in the gallery, and of course, our board chair is here with us today.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. I would like to recognize my two Pages that I have here this week from Sachs Harbour: Calysta Lucas-Kudlak and Cheyenne Gully. Travelling with them is Kim Lucas. Welcome to the House.

Item 7, acknowledgements. Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to acknowledge Susan Fleck. Susan, yesterday, was the recipient of the Premier’s Award for collaboration. Susan was part of the Wildlife Act Working Group. Susan Fleck is a part-time executive director with the Dehcho Land Use Planning Committee in Fort Providence.

Susan was the director of wildlife from December 2005 until September 2011, when she lived in Yellowknife.

Susan was very much involved with the ENR personnel working group that faced an immense challenge in dealing with the 2012 bison anthrax outbreak in the summer of 2012.

She traded 25 employees for 25 sled dogs when she moved to Fort Providence. I’d like to congratulate Susan today.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Item 8, oral questions. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There has been a lot of debate around junior kindergarten and much of that has to do with funding or the apparent lack of funding that is provided to educational authorities to implement this new program. Most of this criticism was around the funding and, I believe, not the merits of junior kindergarten itself. Again, my questions today will be for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

I think the burning question here today, and I think in the minds of many, is: Why did the Minister just not seek additional funding to pay for junior kindergarten?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I guess simply put is that we don’t have the new funding available to us. I’ve been trying to get some actual numbers from Finance where our financial situation is and obviously we’re not in a positive in that regard. In a perfect world, obviously, we would be seeking additional funding, but since we don’t have that at this point, I had to work innovatively and creatively within our department, so that’s what we have done. We’ve reached out to the PTR that’s available to us. We’re still under our legislated level, so you’ll have to keep that in mind. We’re at that point.

I’m sure the Minister will receive more questions on this topic later today. I have heard the Minister say countless times, and many times, that the graduation rates in small communities have declined. This is a disturbing trend and I think everyone here is very concerned. All the more reason to avoid, in my humble opinion, diverting funding from K to 12 to junior kindergarten.

My question to the Minister of ECE is: How can graduation rates in these small communities be improved if ECE is just pulling away money from K to 12 and just putting it into junior kindergarten?

The Member for Inuvik congratulated 36 graduates, and that’s just one area that we should be proud of and we’ll continue to push that forward. An investment in JK is an investment in the K to 12 overall school system. That’s what we’re doing. Out of the $150

million that we distribute to the school boards, we’re using that funding to educate those individuals so that they can graduate and continue on to post-secondary.

Our research shows us that investment in early childhood of a child’s life has the greatest impact on their lifelong learning and part of their journey as children and grown-ups, and you know that 10 of our smallest communities do not have any education programming. Those are some of the investments that we’ll continue to do, and that means that parents who believe their children will benefit from quality programs for four-year-olds have no options. I believe we’re doing what we can to assist those individual communities.

I have listened carefully to the debate over the last few months and even today and have listened to constituents who are afraid that junior kindergarten will reduce the funding available to children with special needs especially requiring one-on-one attention.

My question to the Minister of ECE is as follows: Can you assure this House and the parents of the Northwest Territories that funding for students who require extraordinary assistance will not be affected through the implementation of junior kindergarten?

I can assure that will be the case. We’re inclusive schooling. The special needs that are provided to education authorities through what is called inclusive schooling and that funding will continue. We’re not touching the funding. We’re dealing with the PTR at this point to deal with the JK. Junior kindergarten implementation, obviously, will not take away from approximately $26 million in inclusive schooling funding that education authorities receive on an annual basis. The amount of inclusive requirement is the fact that it is set out in legislation, so we have to work with that as well. At the end of the day, we’re not even going near inclusive schooling on this particular subject, but we’re dealing with the PTR.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question to the Minister of ECE is: In light of all the confusion around junior kindergarten and the strong reaction we are getting from both parents and school boards, would it not be wise just to wait one more year to implement junior kindergarten and that maybe we’ll have more money in place so that we can work out all these problems?

There has been a lot of debate going back and forth between myself and the school board chairs and the school boards across the Northwest Territories. We’ve met just as recently as last month and I did listen to the school board chairs. We are going to have over 600

individual students registered over the two-year timespan. The fact is that 23 communities are ready to take on the role of JK. At the same time, I’ve been making some amendments to our initial stand where I provided optional junior kindergarten. At the beginning it was mandatory and everybody had to do it, but after listening carefully to the Members, I have decided that it will be optional. At the same time, I’ve allowed half-time as well as an option. At the beginning, at the get-go it was full-time. In those two areas I’ve allowed some flexibility and we’re making some changes along the way.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will continue the conversation and questions about junior kindergarten that my colleagues have been asking for the last couple of weeks. There’s a lot of frustration and it’s almost to the point where, you know, we’re very frustrated with the process. My questions for the Minister today are the pupil-teacher ratio that he indicates 16 to 1, is this a ratio that each school will be looked at independently or is he looking at the complete authority at a 16 to 1 ratio, because there’s a big discrepancy between the smaller centres and the larger centres in what the ratios are.

Is the Minister going to commit to doing the pupil-teacher ratio in every school?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We have to follow the act, as well, the Education Act, which does speak to territorial-wide PTR of 16 to 1. That’s the legislation level that we’re working with that’s before us. We’ll continue to work with the school boards at that level. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, that’s part of the difficulty and the fact that if you’re dealing with a small centre and you only have three or four students, then that ratio is thrown off completely in some of the bigger communities, Fort Smith and Hay River, for example, in the South Slave, where the ratios may be 25 or 30 to 1.

I’m just wondering if the Minister could look at individuals, especially on the implementation of junior kindergarten.

Mr. Speaker, I did commit to providing additional new money to those educational authorities that exceed 16 to 1. Those are areas that we’ll look at. Then again, we have to keep in mind the Education Act. It’s territorial-wide PTR and it is 16 to 1.

Yellowknife came at us with additional potential students projected, so we looked at that. Other community schools, other regions, those are discussions that we’ve had with them as well. Mahsi.

Again, the same question is the difficulty in the fact that when you have an authority, such as the South Slave District Authority, where there are small communities, large communities and medium-sized communities, those ratios are thrown off by some of the ratios in the smaller communities where there is maybe only three or four students to one teacher, whereas in the bigger centres you have 25 or 30 students. That 16 to 1, in theory, should be held accountable to every school, let’s say every local district education authority at least.

Is the Minister willing to look at that opportunity for the larger centres that have been thrown off by the smaller ratios?