January 23, 2017



 

And

Shane Thompson, MLA Nahendeh
Chair, Standing Committee on Social Development

NWT Legislative Assembly
Box 1320 
Yellowknife, NT 2L9

Dear Mr./Ms. . and Mr.Thompson,

I am writing this letter as a parent with children in Yellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS) with concerns
around the funding of Junior Kindergarten (JK) and the effect it will have on grades Kindergarten to 12.

There are a number of benefits to-the proposed implementation of the JK program. It is clear that
access to appropriate early childhood play?based education provides opportunities for early
intervention, social and emotional development, and better preparedness for Kindergarten and the
rest of the school grades. It also enables all families, no matter what their economic situation, to have
access to play?based learning for four year olds without being limited by fees. For these reasons, I am in
support of JK programs.

The Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) has stated that collectively, Boards will
be required to find $2 million from within their current funding. resources are already
stretched to the limit and I am concerned with the impact of removing $2 million from K-12 programming.
What will be the impact of removing these resources from the rest of the system; fewer classroom
assistants, reduced trades programming, fewer textbooks and classroom tools, fewer teachers?
The Minister has suggested that schools could find this money through larger class sizes and cutting
non-core programs. Degrading the quality of our existing educational system in order to implement JK
is not the answer. It?s not fair to the over 8,000 students in the NWT, which includes approximately 1330
students in YCS.

Furthermore, I am concerned about cutting non?core programs in order to implement JK. YCS provides
a number of non-core programs that are essential to education: Fine arts, Do Edaezhe, Career and
Technical programming, religion classes, Literacy Intervention and to name a few. All students,
past and present, have benefitted from these programs and many have succeeded only because of
these programs. These are not just ?nice to have? classes and the loss of any or all of them would be
disastrous. Who would be responsible for deciding which non-core programs are to be out? How would
anyone be able to make those decisions?

The third concern I have is JK and inclusive schooling. ECE staff indicated that JK students will not be
included in the count for the purposes of determining funding for inclusive schooling. One of the main
goals of JK is to present an Opportunity for early intervention for at-risk children and this is the intention
of inclusive schooling. Exclusion of JK from inclusive schooling funding contradicts a main objective of
JK. Interventions for children identified with special needs should be done as soon as possible;
therefore, all children in must be included in the count.