Saskatoon Public Schools says that contracts for about 80 temporary educational assistants are ending during the next two weeks because it has not received expected federal funds.
In a note for the parents, the school division said that it hired additional educational assistants who expected to receive federal dollars of the indigenous services of Canada as part of the initiative of Jordan principles, which is destined to ensure that indigenous children receive the services of Health, social and educational that they need.
That includes financing educational assistants to help indigenous children in schools. Saskatoon Public has used Jordan’s main money since the 2018-19 school year to hire attendees.
The school division said he had no problem receiving funds in the past and received $ 15 million through the program last year.
The letter to the parents said that this school year never arrived.
The Saskatoon Public School Board told CBC that it decided three weeks ago that the dismissals would have to be done because funds had not been received since April.
“Our teachers will be affected,” said Charlene Scrimshaw, deputy director of Education of Saskatoon public schools.
“That extra adult they have there to support the programming they are establishing for students who have gaps in their learning, or perhaps have physical needs, … [is] I will not be there. “
The letter to parents said: “Without continuous federal funds, it is no longer sustainable to maintain these positions, and the school division lacks resources to cover the gap.”
Saskatoon public schools “administered millions of dollars assigned through the Jordan principle” from 2019 to 2024, according to the letter.
He said parents will be notified before February 14 if their child is losing support as educational assistant.
CBC contacted other school divisions to see if they faced similar situations. The spokesmen of the Catholic schools Greater Saskatoon and the regina’s public schools said they received funds through the Jordan principle this year and are not saying goodbye to educational assistants.
Regina’s Catholic schools said that some funds are waiting for Jordan’s principle, but have no plans for the dismissals of the staff and depends on the contingency plans carried out during their budget process.
‘It may seem half a day with an EA’
Public Saskatoon schools said it has been administered so far due to a surplus, with the excess money in Jordan’s main account for reasons such as the financing that remains in the division after the students left.
The surplus will run out of the end of the school year, the division said.
The Saskatoon public school division said it actually hired 200 new educational assistants through the program at the beginning of this school year.
It has about 110 educational assistants whose contracts will not end early. The division will continue to pay them through the main money of Jordan’s surplus for this year, and will decide in May what to do with those positions if the financing does not arrive.
“It may seem half a day with an EA,” said Scrimshaw. “It may seem like a group of children with an EA during part of one day, one hour, it only depends on the child’s need.”
A spokesman from the Ministry of Education of Saskatchewan said in an email to CBC that it is “disappointing that the federal government has decided to reduce the financing for Vulnerable Students of First Nation in the Saskatchewan schools.”
But Jennifer Kozelj, press secretary of the Minister of Indigenous Services, Patty Hajdu, said in a statement sent by email that “guaranteeing the same access to educational services for all students” in public schools is a provincial responsibility and that Jordan’s main financing is “It is supposed to be used when necessary; It should not deny provincial or territorial responsibility. “
That “is not within the spirit of why Jordan’s principle was created first,” Kozelj said.
He also said that the federal government “must use public dollars in a responsible manner”, which means “to ensure that financing is used properly and specificly for children from the first nations.”
In November, the Canadian Human Rights Court ordered Ottawa to address a request for orders to address an accumulation of assistance requests under the Jordan Principle program. Federal lawyers submitted a request for a judicial review of that order in December.
The Government had identified 140,000 unprocessed applications, 25,000 of them labeled as urgent, but in December they could not say when they would be authorized.
Jordan’s principle is named after Jordan River Anderson, a child from Norway House Cree Nation in northern Manitoba, who died in 2005, at age five, in the middle of a two -year battle between Manitoba and Ottawa who would pay for Your care.
Saskatchewan NDP education critic, Matt Love, said the provincial government should work with the affected school divisions and the federal government to ensure that the divisions are well financed.
“We have a system that needs support for students with intensive support needs and now we have a loss of 80 professionals who provide those support,” said Love.
