Kakivak will give divisional board $1 million this year

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — The Kakivak Association will spend a quarter of its budget this year to provide more Inuit cultural education and support staff in public schools.

The training arm of the Qikiqtaani Inuit Association has agreed to put up $1 million to hire 10 new classroom support assistants, 17 Inuit elders, and two roving mental health consultants beginning next fall.

“This shouldn’t really be looked at as an expenditure, this should be looked at as an investment in education,” Pat Angnakak, the CEO of the Kakivak Association said this week.

“In 10 years from now we just may have made a difference in a child’s life.”

The deal with the regional school board also includes hefty salary increases for non-unionized classroom assistants throughout the Baffin.

A first of its kind in Nunavut, the third-party funding agreement comes a year before regional school boards are slated to be phased out completely. It also marks a significant departure in Kakivak’s approach to distributing federal training dollars.

Over the last three years, most of Kakivak’s training funds have been spent on mature students enrolled at Nunavut Arctic College.

By shifting resources to the elementary and high-school levels, Kakivak directors hope to get more bang for their buck.

“It’s a lot more expensive to fund a student who is out of the school system, because by the time they come to us for sponsorship, they’re usually married, they have kids, and you have to help them with daycare and so on. There’s a lot of barriers there,” Angnakak said.

“We need to keep kids in school now, so that they’re more self-sufficent when they get out.”

Under the agreement, Kakivak has directed spending of $200,000 in 1999-2000 in the area of student mental health to address learning disabilities, including behavioural problems associated with fetal alcohol syndrome.

The Inuit organization has also earmarked $425,000 to hire 17 “elders in residence” to teach traditional land skills and to amplify the presence of Inuit culture in the school.

“When there is some difficulty with a child, to try and work with the parents, a lot of times it’s easier if you have somebody from the community that’s respected and has the maturity and can show the guidance and the support to the parent and the child,” Angnakak said, “so that you have that coming from the community and not necessarily only from somebody coming from another place.”

Kakivak will spend $430,000 to boost the average number of classroom support assistants on the school board’s payroll to 46.

In addition, teachers assistants in the Baffin region will see their salaries rise by nearly 20 per cent in 1999/2000.

“I think it’s a significant reflection of the belief that they should be earning more,” Lorne Levy, assistant director of the Baffin Divisional Education Council said.

Kakivak’s board of directors are open to the idea of a more long-term commitment, too, and that pleases board administrators.

“There is not enough money currently in our contribution [agreement] to do all the things that we believe are important to do in our schools,” Levy said.

“I am still hoping to negotiate something similar in the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions,”

Nunavut’s new minister of education, made aware of Kakivak’s contribution last week, said he welcomes the extra resources.

“This is very good news,” said James Arvaluk.

“We need to take advantage of any opportunity to generate more dollars into education from anywhere. This extra money will ultimately be beneficial to the people of Nunavut.”