Thank you.
With the Manitoba First Nations School System, we were able to negotiate a much better financial arrangement. We're actually closer to $20,000 for this coming year. That allows us to provide better salaries for the staff working in our schools, so we have an easier time recruiting for the southern first nations. We still have a problem with recruiting for the northern, isolated first nations, but those are issues that we are working on right now.
We have a new campaign we call Teach for First Nations, and we're trying to promote the benefits of working with our school system and working in first nations schools in Manitoba. We have also provided more language- and culture-based programs for the students. We see higher attendance rates among the students, and because we're able to assist them by offering more high school programming, we expect to see more high school graduates in the near future. We also expect to see an easier transition to universities and colleges for our students.
We expect to see a large improvement, not just in attendance rates but also in the success rates of our students. We're in the second year of operations, so we'll have our second graduating glass this coming June.
We expect to see great things in terms of having more resources not only for salaries of teachers but also for library books. A lot of the students told us they had no library books in the past. Now we have more money so we can provide better technology and better technological assistance for the students. They now have access to laptops and technology-based learning. The new funding model has allowed us to address a lot of the challenges and issues that our communities faced before.
The 10 first nations that are part of our system have expressed how pleased they are that we are helping them to manage and administer their schools, because they see a better future for all the students in our schools.