The Prince Albert Catholic School Division will be seeing additional staff for the 2024-2025 school year after being approved for funding through Jordan’s Principle.
The division was notified that they have received $1.2 million to fund the hiring of 38 educational assistants (EA) for the upcoming school year. Director of education Lorel Trumier said that the division was pleased to receive this federal funding.
“We worked with our parents and our families as well as our students support teachers, administrators and homeroom teachers (and) worked with our families to make the application,” Trumier said.
The application was approved over a week ago to fill the positions and they have hired 26 of the 38 positions as of the board of education’s regular meeting on Aug. 19.
“We have got a very busy HR Superintendent right now to get that to happen,” Trumier said.
Jordan’s Principle is a federally funded for First Nations children up to age 18 who live on reserves or in urban centers. The aim of the program is to ensure that there are no gaps in services for Indigenous children. Groups or individuals can make applications for supports including mental health and special education, among others.
Jordan’s Principle helps ensure all First Nations children living in Canada can access the products, services, and supports they need, when they need them.
All applications are made collaboratively with families and must be approved by a parent or guardian.
“We know that ultimately it will improve the supports for students and so we are looking forward to onboarding (hiring) the staff to fill those positions,” she said.
The word funding does not include MEPP, CPP and EI contributions. The division has submitted these for approval to Jordan’s Principle.
Jordan’s Principle did not approve funding for statutory holidays. The division has submitted an appeal. Trumier said that the use of the word appeal in the memo to the board was too strong of a word choice.
“We’re just unsure (and) would like to go back to Jordan’s Principle management and talk about the pay for statutory holidays,” Trumier said.
She explained that the division is seeking verification on why it is not included and they have made contingency plans to pay the statutory holiday pay as is the labour standard.
“We’re just going to go back to Jordans Principle and sort that out with them. Maybe it’s just (an) oversight. It might be just the absence of some language, and we want to make sure,” Trumier said.
“We’re just going to go back and verify with the organizer that there’s some clarity around what’s paid and what’s not. Regardless, we’re putting our educational assistants in a good position,” she added.
Overall she is pleased to have the new positions available. “We still want the good word out there that we do have some positions, so people who have an interest to work with students and have perhaps some background as well to work with them and we’ll do some training, but there is opportunity there for positions,” Trumier s
