Jackson Lafferty

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is the Member visited a community and there was one organization that may not be supportive of the JK, but there are other organizations in the community that we’ve been dealing with on constant occasions. Not only that but the school board that’s responsible for that particular community, we deal with the school board. So the DECs, the school board, make the decision working with us to deliver Junior Kindergarten into their community. That’s the avenue and the protocol we follow. The decision is from the DEC. Thank you.

It was the Finance Minister, our Premier and I who have stated that we are going to re-evaluate our situation. We still have time until the next delivery of JK into our regional centres and also to Yellowknife the following year. This is a situation where we are seriously looking at and also to share some perspectives from the 23 communities, the regional centres and from Yellowknife’s perspective. We’re doing what we can to reach out. Whether it be the taskforce that we established, the toll-free number, the website, we’re doing what we can to reach out to the communities.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad the Member asked that question, because we met this morning on that particular topic. We were talking about the communication dialogue with the 23 communities and having some sort of forum or symposium for the whole Northwest Territories. It’s a matter of bringing all the organizations to Yellowknife. I guess you would have to have it here, from the regional perspective. It would take some time to arrange that.

But as the Premier alluded to, we are open to these types of forums, to listen to the general public. It is already on our website as well. I like to hear...

Mahsi. Part of the engagement with the educators, we want to hear their perspective, as well, because they’re the ones who are delivering Junior Kindergarten to our communities, the 23 communities that we are currently delivering Junior Kindergarten and hearing their perspectives. Just recently I met with my department. Why couldn’t we have a survey done in the communities, as well, because we’re into three months of Junior Kindergarten being delivered in our communities and we haven’t heard much from the 23 communities. So, I as the Minister responsible want to hear their perspectives. Not...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When it comes down to meeting with the general public, the stakeholders, as I stated in this House on numerous occasions, there’s been a lot of discussion that took place at the regional level. That was part of the process, as well, with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and now we’re talking about the Early Childhood Development Framework. That’s a 10-year agreement that’s before us. Part of that process, obviously, is engaging the daycares, the home operators in the communities on how, if there’s going to be an impact on them, we work with them because we...

When it comes to delivering Junior Kindergarten in the 23 communities, obviously the teachers will be teaching our kids, our children in our school system, and the teachers go through various university degree programs, and part of the programming, of course, is early childhood as part of their degree program. We may not have a specific early childhood specialist teaching our kids in our school system, but we do have qualified teachers in our communities that are teaching our kids.

Mahsi. That is exactly what we’re doing. My staff is currently meeting with YK1 and YCS, just through discussion on their overall budget as well. We are doing the same thing with South Slave school board as well. There are discretionary funds in there, as well, and there are various areas of funding that we found to be flexible. The flexibility is there that we can work with. At the end of the day, it is up to the school boards to decide if they can allow that to happen and so forth. My staff is diligently working with the school boards, whether it be Yellowknife and Hay River, Fort Smith, the...

Anything we do has to be documented. So if there’s a letter from the DECs saying they don’t want Junior Kindergarten in their communities – because I provided the option – whether it be Fort Providence or other small communities, then we have to act on the correspondence that will come to my attention, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.

When I speak to DEAs, we have an agreement in place where when it comes to rolling out the K to 12 programming and not only that, even post-secondary, we have a representative on there from the local DEA onto the DECs. I deal with the board chairs. Any issue brought to my attention comes from the committee perspective as well. By the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, it is the board that decides which community will be delivering JK. Some of the community decided not to pursue it.

Again, it was me that provided the flexibility whether it is optional, full time or part time. Initially it was...

Those are just some of the surveys and also the inventory that we’re going to be collecting from communities, and based on that, obviously, the decision needs to happen, or if there are going to be changes, obviously, I would have to bring it back to my Cabinet colleagues and say there is an outcry in this area. That is the input that I’m seeking from the general public, because we’re responsible for the whole Northwest Territories, not just 23 communities but for regional centres and also for Yellowknife in order to deliver a successful Junior Kindergarten.