Saskatoon Public Schools says it’s ending contracts for about 80 temporary educational assistants over the next two weeks because it hasn’t received expected federal funding.
In a note to parents, the school division said it hired additional educational assistants expecting to receive federal dollars from Indigenous Services Canada as part of the Jordan’s Principle initiative, which is meant to ensure Indigenous children receive the health, social and education services they need.
That includes funding educational assistants to aid Indigenous children in schools. Saskatoon Public has used Jordan’s Principle money since the 2018-19 school year to hire assistants.
The school division said it’s had no trouble receiving funding in the past, and received $15 million through the program last year.
The letter to parents said this school year, the funding never came.
The board of Saskatoon Public Schools told CBC it decided three weeks ago that layoffs would have to be made because funding hadn’t been received since April.
“Our teachers are going to be impacted,” said Charlene Scrimshaw, the deputy director of education for Saskatoon Public Schools.
“That extra adult that they have there to support the programming that they’re putting in place for students who have gaps in their learning, or perhaps have physical needs, … [is] not going to be there.”
The letter to parents said “without continued federal funding, it is no longer sustainable to maintain these positions, and the school division lacks the resources to cover the gap.”
Saskatoon Public Schools “managed millions of dollars allocated through Jordan’s Principle” from 2019 to 2024, the letter said.
It said parents will be notified before Feb. 14 if their child is losing educational assistant support.
CBC contacted other school divisions to see if they were facing similar situations. Spokespeople for Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools and Regina Public Schools said they received funding through Jordan’s Principle this year and are not laying off educational assistants.
Regina Catholic Schools said it is waiting on some funding through Jordan’s Principle, but has no plans for staff layoffs and is relying on contingency plans made during its budgeting process.
‘It might look like half days with an EA’
Saskatoon Public Schools said it’s been managing so far because of a surplus, with leftover money in the Jordan’s Principle account for reasons such as funding remaining in the division after students left.
The surplus will run out close to 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 be ended early. The division will continue to pay them through the surplus Jordan’s Principle money for this year, and will decide in May what to do with those positions if funding doesn’t come through.
“It might look like half days with an EA,” Scrimshaw said. “It might look like a group of children with an EA for part of a day, an hour — it just depends on the need of the child.”
A spokesperson for Saskatchewan’s Education Ministry said in an email to CBC it is “disappointing that the federal government has decided to reduce funding for vulnerable First Nation Students in Saskatchewan schools.”
But Jennifer Kozelj, a press secretary for Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu, said in an emailed statement that “ensuring equal access to educational services for all students” in public schools is a provincial responsibility, and that Jordan’s Principle funding is “supposed to be used when necessary; it shouldn’t negate provincial or territorial responsibility.”
That is “not within the spirit of why Jordan’s Principle was created in the first place,” said Kozelj.
She also said the federal government “must use public dollars in responsible ways,” which means “ensuring that the funding is being used appropriately and specifically for First Nations children.”
In November, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered Ottawa to address a backlog to address a backlog of assistance requests under the Jordan’s Principle program. Federal lawyers filed an application for a judicial review of that order in December.
The government had identified 140,000 unprocessed applications — 25,000 of them labelled as urgent — but in December, couldn’t say when they would be cleared.
Jordan’s Principle is named after Jordan River Anderson, a boy from Norway House Cree Nation in northern Manitoba who died in 2005, at age five, in the midst of a two-year battle between Manitoba and Ottawa over who would pay for his care.
Saskatchewan NDP education critic Matt Love said the provincial government should work with affected school divisions and the federal government to ensure the divisions are properly funded.
“We have a system in need of supports for students with intensive support needs and now we have a loss of 80 professionals who provide those supports,” said Love.
