Sask. government asking for federal help to support Syrian refugee students

The Saskatchewan government says all provinces are asking the federal government for financial help to support Syrian refugees.

Regina Public Schools announced on Tuesday that the division doesn’t have the resources to hire any more English as an Additional Language teachers to help 160 Syrian students expected to enrol this year.

Right now the school division is shuffling 38 EAL teachers around to schools to support a total of 859 students who need help learning English. The division said it would be forced to triage staffing and supports to direct resources to students with higher needs for English.

The province says it already committed $1 million in funding for EAL assessments over the school division fiscal year including $588,000 in the 2014-15 provincial budget to cover the Sept. 1 to March 31 school division fiscal year and $420,000 in the 2015-16 budget to cover the rest of the year.

An emailed statement from the Saskatchewan government said discussions are ongoing with the federal government across all jurisdictions to ask about funding to support refugees in communities and schools.

The province also said there is no firm count on how many refugee children will be going to each school, but school divisions are tracking those numbers.