School boards in Alberta are faced with challenges on many fronts this year as the provincial government continues a war of attrition against the public sector.
The immediate issue is the budget crunch. The provincial government froze the overall education budget in the fall, which thanks to an ever growing student body amounted to a cut. The NDP opposition has calculated an overall $210-million gap in education funding. The UCP Education Ministry says it has maintained funding and per student base instruction rates. Cuts have been made to other envelopes of education funding like maintenance and transportation.
The school boards are scrambling to find innovative ways to tighten their belts without biting into the classroom. How they do that will have ramifications that cascade into parents budgets.
Several school boards are looking at increasing school bus fees. Larger class sizes, fewer support workers, frozen compensation for non-union staff and trustee per diems are all on the table.
The Edmonton School board received an administration report parsing out the potential to add minutes to each school day, thus reducing the final number of school days in the jurisdiction's year. Increasing the school day by two minutes for students from Grades 1 to 9 would reduce one day of the school year, which saves at least $150,000, according to the report. Popping in three extra teacher personal development days and two non-instructional days would save about $2 million.
Of course then parents would have to work out care for their kids on those "saved" days.
The Calgary Board of Education is in a particular frenzy over the budget. It initially threatened to lay off 317 teachers. In response, the education minister changed funding policy to allow the boards to dip into their maintenance budgets to support classroom instruction.
The board rescinded the layoff notices but Education Minister Adriana LaGrange is now auditing the school board and hasn't ruled out firing the trustees.
The Calgary board has also laid blame on the cutbacks for its plan to rethink its involvement in the National Sport School, a school jointly run by the public board and WinSport to educate prospective high calibre athletes. Two dozen graduates of the National Sport School competed in the 2018 winter Olympics.
Scrapping the school or reconfiguring it substantially would save at least $1 million according to the board, which will announce a decision in May on the school's fate.
Nuking specialty programs, such as the sport school, larger class sizes and reducing classroom supports are the kind of decisions which could drive parents to private schools.
And it appears the UCP would be more than fine with that.
On Tuesday the Edmonton School Board asked the government for the detailed results of its recent survey on choice in education. Board members are concerned that the survey is being used to justify increasing government support for private education.
And indeed the UCP does have a piece of legislation to unveil this year called the Choice in Education Act which is supposed to protect the status and funding of private education in the province.
"Albertans overwhelmingly elected us with a mandate to introduce a Choice in Education Act. We are still in the process of analyzing the more than 50,000 responses from Albertans and will have more to say later in the spring session," said LaGrange's press secretary Colin Aitchison.
Alberta already funds private schools to a higher level than any other province, providing 70 per cent of the per student grant given to public schools, amounting to $290.7 million for 2019-2020.
Despite that generous funding, Alberta has a relatively low percentage of the student body in private schools. Some analysts argue that's because the province's public and Catholic school systems have risen to the challenge and provided a wide array of good quality specialty options.
At their annual policy conference in December UCP members voted 307 in favour and 267 opposed to establishing a voucher system for education. That would see full per student grants follow the students whether they are enrolled in a public or private school. Public school advocates predict this will further squeeze the public system and lead to inequity in education.
LaGrange poured cold water on the voucher system idea immediately after the vote, saying its not on the funding review table at this time.
But the potential for the UCP to move in that direction is enough to give struggling school boards cause to worry about their dominant position in education.
Photo Credit: Toronto Star
