Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had some opening comments, I guess, some of the things that have been coming up over the last year. Obviously, education is of great importance to most of us here. One of the biggest budgets here, obviously.
Some of my colleagues talked about, obviously, the pressure that junior kindergarten placed on our educators, our DEAs, the South Slave Divisional Education Board. I guess we were just concerned about how that rolled out, and obviously, we’re looking forward to reviewing and seeing how that will work out in the future. I think, from Hay River’s perspective, we had a lot of early childhood development programs in place, so there is a lot of pressure if junior kindergarten was a mandatory issue or had to be rolled out that it would affect a lot of those organizations, so we were highly concerned in that area. We’re looking forward to seeing how we can work with the department on some sort of Junior Kindergarten Program in some of the places that want it, but I think it has to be wanted and it can’t be a cookie cutter approach of this is the way we’re going to roll it out. I think regions and communities have to make a decision on how they want to affect this implementation of junior kindergarten. I’m looking forward to some of that discussion in the future.
The education renewal, obviously, I guess it’s hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around how we’re going to renovate the whole building and still be able to live here and live in the facility. I don’t know how we re-form education and still have education operational. Making some changes will put a lot of pressure on the cost. I’m not sure where and how we’re going to roll this all out. I’m not clear on the complete plan of how that’s going to happen. So, I mean, we’re hearing concerns about that and obviously we have our DEA and our council that are just a little bit leery of how that’s going to roll out. Because of the pressures that they have financially, they’re constantly looking at where the dollars are coming from. You know, debating whether they bus or not bus. Just to be able to find some dollars to keep programming going and, you know, keeping the kids educated.
Some other concerns there, obviously. You know, I think as a resource centre we see a lot of pressure, a lot more kids, you know, and obviously the social passing puts pressures in the classrooms. Because of the funding issues there aren’t as many assistants that we can put there. So there’s a lot of angst when we go to our meetings with our DEAs
and councils to talk about stuff, because it seems like we’re asking more of them without any dollars attached to it. They’re obviously finding a lot of pressure, and I keep saying pressure because I walk into the building and you can just feel that there’s angst there. They’re concerned about how it’s going to roll out. The pressures that they currently have, how can they do more? You know, it’s very difficult for us to sit here and support the way some of the things roll out from the department when the DEAs don’t get a lot of consultation. They might get a quick visit, but, I mean, the whole process is they want to be able to implement it the way they want.
One of the things recently in talking in our constituency meeting, in talking to one of the people, was even the sponsored iPads that we’ve talked about, thinking that putting iPads into schools or putting them into early childhood development would be a great idea. But, I mean, the problem is that with that technology comes more need for support, more technical support, and we don’t really have that many people in the schools that have the IT support. So, I mean, we have keen teachers that will take an interest in it and they seem to be the go-to for that technical support but, you know, to get additional iPads, it sounds like a great idea for the youth, but when it puts more pressure on the teachers and somebody to deal with how that iPad broke down today or it’s not working the way it’s supposed to is a concern. I mean, that’s one concern we just heard recently.
You know, in this department, obviously I’ve talked a fair bit about linking our post-secondary students to the jobs that we offer, the vacancies that we have. I think we need to work harder and I think we’ve made some strides, some steps, to make sure we have a link, a contact with those post-secondary students. I think that’s one key to get more people from the Northwest Territories to come back and work in the Northwest Territories. Once they get back here, they start living here, they get jobs, they buy a house, you know, they’re entrenched in the community. So I think we need to work really closely with HR to get that. I don’t think we have that many students and maybe the Minister can give some information on the actual amount we’re dealing with, but it seems to me it could be manageable to be able to contact those people, especially with today’s technology, e-mails and stuff like that, social media, to get out the information of, you know, we want you to come back, and linking, you know, like I was asking this week with the Minister of HR, linking those jobs so that we have the ability to offer them a job before they get their last year done in their degree or their technical institution. You know, we have these skilled labourers that want to come back to the Northwest Territories, not even looking south because I already got a job, you know, in one of the
communities or in Yellowknife or wherever I’m from. I’ve been able to land a job, so why would I even worry about looking anywhere else? That’s most of my comments, Madam Chair. If the Minister could give me a quick response, that would be great. Thank you.
