Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The $1.3 million, as we stated during Committee of the Whole, will be moved back into the inclusive schooling funding that will be provided to the education authorities throughout the Northwest Territories and distributed for the 201718 academic year. The remaining $500,000 is going to be used by the department for training of all NWT program support teachers, school principals, as well as classroom assistants in the 201718. Currently, right now, some of that training is happening here, in Yellowknife, this week. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I’ve said in this Assembly, education is one of the cornerstones of development and success. There are always people behind a student’s experience in education, and they are usually teachers or principals.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Ms. Carolyn Carroll, principal of both Harry Camsell School and Princess Alexandra School in Hay River, on being recognized as one of Canada’s Outstanding Principals for 2017. Principals who receive the award are nominated by their colleagues, school staff, and community members. She is the ninth principal in the NWT...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we did fully commit to fully funding junior kindergarten in the 2017-18 year, which does include junior kindergarten students, four-year-olds.

Once again, that is another part of funding that we provide through our programs. It is based on enrolment, so the ALCB funding will go up when enrolment in the schools go up. The majority of that funding actually goes to fund instructors who run cultural programs throughout the whole school and is available for all students. Our curriculum within junior kindergarten does have a cultural component, but the junior kindergarten program will also have access to all cultural programming and activity there. So that ALCB program is not directly linked to the funding with junior kindergarten.

Currently, with the rollouts and the numbers that we're getting in with students who might be entering junior kindergarten, our funding formula for the schools will reflect what we have in contributions with the education authorities. Currently, our staff is working with the education boards and authorities to see how that funding is going to roll out. Busing is a topic in those discussions, and once we have a resolution and resolve how we're going to address that, we'll come back and we'll let the Member know.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, it doesn't. The inclusive schooling is a different part of funding that focuses on the needs of the children. With the implementation and rollout of junior kindergarten in the 2017-18 academic year, we feel that four-year-olds coming into the education system have the sufficient supports of all staff who will be in the school setting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the most important areas we can invest in is early childhood development, and the Government of the Northwest Territories has made a commitment in its mandate to do this by implementing its Right from the Start Framework. Ages zero to five are the most critical time in a child’s development, and the work that the Departments of Health and Social Services and Education, Culture and Employment have been doing in partnership have been helping all of the children in the Northwest Territories.

Over the past year, we have made some significant improvements...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also would like to take this opportunity to welcome and recognize a good friend in the gallery, and a good friend of the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Patrick Joss. I know he is a big fan of the Legislative Assembly, and I am really glad that he could be joining here today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today is national Pink Shirt Day, a day celebrated during the last Wednesday of February of each year. We provided pink carnations for all of the Members, and I am pleased to see all the pink in the House today, marking our acknowledgement that bullying in any form is unacceptable.

This initiative was started by two brave young men in Nova Scotia, David Shepherd and Travis Price, who gave away 50 pink shirts after a grade 9 student was bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school.

These two young men raised national awareness of a significant societal problem...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and yes, we do have third-party reviews by other partner institutions that, obviously, we work with. For instance, the Bachelor of Education program is reviewed by the University of Saskatchewan. The nursing program is credited and reviewed by the Canadian Association of School and Nursing, as well as the Registered Nurses' Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The trades program, that is reviewed under the Apprenticeships Division within our department.

It is something that we always look at and look into in terms of reviewing the program, making sure...