SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife's school boards are giving city parents and teachers the opportunity to discuss the territorial government's planned overhaul of the education system.

Yellowknife Education District No. 1 chair John Stephenson and Yellowknife Catholic School chair Simon Taylor hope parents will attend a town meeting tonight to discuss the Department of Education, Culture and Employment's planned overhaul of the education system. - Candace Thomson/NNSL photo

Yellowknife Catholic Schools, Yellowknife Education District No. 1, and the city's French school board are holding a town meeting tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. at St. Joseph School to hear concerns or suggestions regarding the plan.

Last month, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE)released a document titled Directions for Change, also known as the Education Renewal and Innovation Framework. It states a list of priorities to bring students up to par with the rest of Canada to ensure their success.

The greatest focus in the framework is to improve the relationship with communities by hosting more events at schools and including localized content in student curriculum. Enhanced resources for staff, improved options for early-childhood development and promoting a sense of belonging between schools and students were also included.

"It accepts the fact that the territories have a lot of difficulties that southern communities don't face. They recognize we have problems and that we need to overcome them," said Simon Taylor, chair of the Yellowknife Catholic School board. "The government plans to create an education system within the NWT, and across the NWT, that is equal or better to the rest of Canada. It's a stated aim that we will do better and that's important."

So far, it is just a list of ideas - the challenge now is implementation.

"What we want to do is get as many people from Yellowknife as we can coming forward and saying, 'Yes this is worth investing in, we support this,'" Taylor said. "This input will direct how the GNWT implements the plan," said John Stephenson, chair of Yk1.

The document is written in bureaucratic jargon which can be difficult for people to make sense of, a challenge the school board chairs plan to address.

"This meeting will give parents a chance to learn about (the initiative) and have some say because so far the opportunity for most parents has been through information shared online," Taylor said. "They haven't had a face-to-face meeting to hear about this.

The meeting will include a presentation by ECE on the initiative followed by an open discussion with parents.

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