Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that in many of the small communities, we have a lot of good support staff, we have a lot of good teachers, we have a lot of good schools. I don't want to discredit by saying that, you know, because our education is no good or, you know, like I heard that quite a few times, but we know that a lot of work is being done by the school staff. I've seen it myself by the support staff. They're making every effort for the student to succeed, to focus on the outcome. But there is a problem. There's one -- well, there's a lot of problems but, you know, one of the problem is that we know there's a lot of social issues in small communities with drugs, alcohol. You know, there's all kinds of issues. So we do have a problem where the -- in the absentees, it's -- I mean, we've seen the numbers too, the data that's in there and even in the Tlicho region where 84 percent in 2023, you know, 84 percent. It was also presented at our Tlicho government or annual meeting.

So a lot of them went back to the parents, and especially the young parents who are not sending their kids to school. So I even had some -- I talked to some of the young parents too, you know, myself, why. It's not the school. It's not the teachers. You know, it's us why, you know, because we know that the teachers, they're not going to be there forever. The school is there at the moment. But it's that not sending their kids to school. And I know that we got away from the -- one of the productive choice, it will be nice if we can focus on -- especially for family that are on income support, focus on the young family that are not sending their kids to school that are on income support. How can we check to see family that are on income support sending their kids to school? Is there any way or where in the legislation or in this education that one of the productive choices that, you know, in order for a family -- but it's -- I don't know if it's one of the things that you would want to do. But find a way that we can send the kids to school, you know, or they can send their children to school and not be living -- not be at home when the school is out because it's happening a lot in many of the small communities. Even in my region I see that, you know, like, young children should not be at home but nobody is doing anything. So I know there's a lot of blame on the school or the teachers. That's what they're saying, you know, but I don't -- you know, like, I have a little grandson that goes to school, you know, so I -- I mean, that's our job -- or not our job, but that's the parent's job but we're helping the parents, you know, so there's a lot of grandparents that are doing the same thing. But what can we do to help these young parents to start sending their kids to school? And I know that in my region, the family preservation program, they're making an effort. You know, I see them working really hard, really well with the young family.

Not to punish them through the income support. But there's got to be something in there where -- because they are our future generations. We need them to be educated because many of the people are reaching the retirement age and somebody has to take over 20, 30 years from now, and that's, you know -- it's like we got to do something. We can't wait another 10 years, 20 years. Something has to be done now for the students to succeed and start focusing on the outcome, the education outcome. So do you have any plan -- is there a plan that education is doing -- that we are not aware of, but is there a plan in place where we can start focusing on fixing the absentees of our young children? Is ECE working with the parents to focus on improving the attendance rate? Thank you, Madam Chair.