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School boards oppose lack of funding

GNWT contributes no new funds to Yellowknife schools as they prepare for junior kindergarten in 2016

Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, October 29, 2014

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
As Yellowknife school boards prepare for junior kindergarten to be phased-in in 2016, the financial impact will be felt throughout the city's K-to-12 classrooms, chairs of the Catholic and public boards are warning.

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Education Minister Jackson Lafferty hands four-year-old Leah Sundberg a backpack full of school supplies during a tour of the junior kindergarten program at the Kaw Tay Whee School in Dettah on Oct. 3. - Cody Punter/NNSL photo

John Stephenson, board chair with Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (Yk1), and Simon Taylor, board chair of Yellowknife Catholic Schools, issued a joint statement Monday warning parents that delivering junior kindergarten without additional government funding is tantamount to providing 14 grades of education for about the price of 13.

Nonetheless, there is little more that can be done to change the situation, according to Stephenson.

"We have talked with MLAs, we have met with the minister, we have met with the premier, the MLAs passed a motion (calling for additional funding for the program). The government is steadfast in what they're doing," he said.

Early in 2014, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment notified the territory's school boards it would be rolling out a junior kindergarten program incrementally over three years at a projected cost of $7 million.

This past September, 23 small communities, including Dettah and Ndilo, implemented junior kindergarten in their schools for the first time. In the 2015-16 school year, the program is scheduled to be rolled out in Hay River, Fort Smith and Inuvik, as well as in the six small communities that opted out of introducing the program this year. Yellowknife schools are mandated to introduce the program in the 2016-17 school year.

On June 5, regular MLAs passed a non-binding motion calling on the cabinet to provide additional funding to help school boards pay for the program. Cabinet rejected their advice Oct. 15 by denying any new funding.

"The issue we have is not with the (junior kindergarten) program itself," said Stephenson. "The government is implementing this but they're doing it without additional funds."

Board budgets across much of the territory are being cut incrementally over three years, with the Catholic board losing a little more than $1.2 million and Yk1 losing $746,000 during that period.

"We will have to take a look through our budget process in regards to programming or cuts that have to be made in the district," said Claudia Parker, superintendent of the Catholic board.

The Catholic budget was cut by $277,000 in the first year and Yk1 gave up $372,000. In the second year, the Catholic budget will be cut by $525,000 and Yk1 will lose $274,000. In the third year, and for subsequent years, an ongoing Catholic budget drop of $435,969 and an ongoing Yk1 budget drop of $100,000 will be instituted.

"Those are big numbers for relatively small school systems. You can't deliver the same programs. I'm not saying that it's not always possible to find efficiencies and so on, but this is an awfully big hit," said Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley. "When education suffers, our children suffer is the bottom line and I think there's pretty broad concern across the house on what's being done, certainly among regular members, possibly others."

The public board is preparing to welcome 150 four-year-olds to eight new junior kindergarten classes when the program kicks off in two years, which is an estimate based on the typical number of new kindergarten students that arrive annually. Both of Yellowknife's school boards currently offer parent-pay preschool programs that generate revenue and which will continue until 2016, when free junior kindergarten is phased in.

Yk1 typically maintains an operating surplus equal to about five per cent of its budget, which is used to respond to increased enrolment, students' special needs and other contingencies. The surplus will now have to be dedicated to absorbing the costs of the reduced budget, said Stephenson.

"It's not like school boards are sitting on this tremendous additional funding. Those are positions, those are programs, that's art, that's music, that's phys-ed, that's all the things that we currently do in the schools," said Stephenson. "Schools are going to need to make some choices in order to reduce costs to live within the budget that the government gives us."

Gabriela Eggenhofer, deputy minister of Education, counters that the financial stress on both Yellowknife boards is not so dire.

"When you look at their overall budget, you realize that both the one-time and ongoing reductions can be absorbed without gutting the K-to-12 programs and laying off teachers and doing all sorts of other things that we, obviously, wouldn't want to see," she said. "They can go into their accumulated surplus, which is fairly significant."

Yk1's accumulated cash surplus is $2.4 million, she said, and the Catholic board's accumulated surplus is $1.3 million.

"That would basically clear up the reductions for them in year-one and year-two," she said. The ongoing budget decrease beginning in year three represents 0.3 per cent of Yk1's budget, based on conservative enrollment estimates, she said. For the Catholic board, the ongoing budget decrease represents a 1.7 per cent of its budget, she added.

"I think we need to bring that fact to parents and to the public to say it is nowhere nearly as bad as they have painted that picture to be," she said.

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