Days before school starts, junior kindergarten kinks still need to be ironed out in Yellowknife

The two English school boards in Yellowknife say they may need to hire additional teachers to meet the growing number of junior kindergarten students they are expecting this year.

Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (YK1) andYellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS) say they will not know their final enrolment numbers until the first week of September, but YCS is anticipating around100 students in junior kindergarten.

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"This is actually higher than we were expecting," said YCS superintendentClaudiaParker."We may need to increase our staffing."

The Department of Education funded the Catholic school boardfor 88 junior kindergarten students.

"Our board would have to make a decision from our present budgetwhether they were going to hire a new staff member," Parker explained.

"After that we would have to wait and see whether we would get any extra funding from the department. But regardless, our board would have to make the decision that's best for our students."

The territorial government has mandated that communities across the N.W.T.offer junior kindergarten bythe 2017/2018 school year. That's left someschool boards scrambling to figureout issuesaroundbussing, finding classroom space, and renovatingclassrooms and bathrooms to accommodate the younger students.

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Enrolment 'ballooned'at 1 school

YK1 is expecting 140 junior kindergarten students this year, which isin line with what the board was predicting, but51 of those studentswill be stuffed into J.H.Sissons School.

Though four of itsschools are offeringjunior kindergarten, enrolment at J.H. Sissonshas "ballooned," according to YK1 superintendent Metro Huculak.

"We do have on standby, if we need to put an extra class in, a certified teacher who can come in," said Huculak.

Huculaksays the board knows for certain that itwill have eight junior kindergartenclasses, and that may grow to nine.

The high number of students at J.H. Sissonsis also expected to cause issuesforthe after-school program, which is run by the YWCA.Huculaksays that wasanticipated, so over the summer they licensed more spaces within the school such as classrooms and foyers for after-school care.

The Department of Education will review all the school boards' enrolment numbers at the end of September.