Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise too today, along with my colleagues, to discuss Education Week. Obviously, with Education Week we think of our teachers. We had the opportunity to talk to the NWT Teachers’ Association. We are very thankful for those teachers that work in the Northwest Territories. We all know, in our personal lives, teachers that helped us out to get to where we are today.
These teachers are working hard, in the evenings and on some of their own time. We talked recently about some of the sporting events and how some communities do really well in certain sports because of the commitment from some of those teachers.
Recently, over the last year, we’ve had an attack on the teachers and the education, and we see that was the way junior kindergarten was implemented. There was lots of pressure financially on those
teachers and the DEAs to find the money to implement junior kindergarten the way it was rolled out. That’s why we sat here and debated the junior kindergarten so strongly. The fact that they have so many financial pressures now, to add junior kindergarten to that system was not fair. It needed to be implemented in a different process. It needed some funding.
Junior kindergarten is a good idea. We support the concept of junior kindergarten, but not the way it was rolled out. It needs to be implemented by the communities for the communities.
We know there’s a review currently underway of junior kindergarten, and I will have questions for the Minister later on how that review is coming and where the DEAs and those teachers can ask questions on how to implement junior kindergarten for their community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.