Good morning.
With respect to the history of school board management, you know that those involved in French-language education in Saskatchewan had to deal with several obstacles from the start. There were several political decisions which led, in 1931, to the complete abolition of French as a language of instruction for francophones in Saskatchewan. That was followed by a lengthy struggle to have our language rights recognized and 36 years later we finally managed to see some changes. In 1967, the Saskatchewan Education Act was amended to allow for French to be taught in schools and later, designated schools were established.
We know that in 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed official language minority education rights, but it wasn't until 1993 or 1994, in other words 12 years later—in the meantime, assimilation continued—that we were allowed to have our own schools and manage them.
Each time we wanted to claim our rights, we had to take legal action, for instance to correct the underfunding for our school facilities. We always had to fight in order to have our rights upheld.
I would now like to discuss the current situation. The Conseil scolaire fransaskois, which governs the Division scolaire francophone no 310 or DSF, includes some 1,132 students in 12 schools, from kindergarten to grade 12. They are spread out throughout the province. The schools that are most remote are six or seven hours away: that is a long trip. We also manage junior kindergarten classes. There are currently 131 JK students. Our JK students are 3 and 4 years old.
The DSF has a triple mandate: devising school curricula, cultural identity programing and fastening community involvement.
These are the measures we've taken. There is programming support. “Francisation” is something we focus on a great deal. It involves managing early childhood programs, language teaching assistants and socio-cultural facilitation programs in our schools.
Furthermore, we promote student exchange programs through various provincial activities. We are also working on developing a distance learning system. We were also involved in court cases, with grants from the Court Challenges Program, for the Ducharme school, which we just opened in Moose Jaw. We just announced the ECF, École canadienne-française, in Saskatoon. The Notre-Dame-des-Vertus school in Zenon Park required us having to go before the court to have our rights respected. We also had to go before the court to correct DSF underfunding.
Let us now move to the issue of identity and cultural development. We have a marketing budget of approximately $225,000 per year, and we work in partnership with the community. There is also three- and four-year-old junior kindergarten. Full-time kindergarten is not 100% funded.
It is our view that community partnerships are essential to the development of our community.