Privatization threatens Alberta’s world-class public school system By Heather Ganshorn, Research Director, Support Our Students Alberta elected boards, being accountable directly to the Minister of Education. New charter schools are taking over supposedly “under-utilized” schools within the public system.
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December 2021 Rally for Public Education in Calgary.
n the past two years, two major issues have dominated the attention of most people engaged in public education: the impact of COVID-19 on schools, and the UCP government’s draft K-6 curriculum. My organization, Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta, has been active on both of these issues, working with the Albertans Reject the Curriculum Draft Facebook group to raise awareness of the problems with the draft curriculum, an issue I discussed in a previous article. We have also been actively advocating for safe schools during COVID. When the government did not share information on case counts in schools last year, we started a school case tracker to help the public understand what was happening in schools. Our communications director, Wing Li, also contributes to the COVID briefings offered by Protect Our Province Alberta. We continue to work on these issues, but as an organization that advocates for equitable, inclusive public education, we are also concerned that the current government is advancing a privatization agenda while the public is distracted by issues related to the pandemic. In 2019, the UCP government passed The Education Amendment Act, which removed the cap on charter schools. Then in 2020 they passed the Choice in Education Act which removed the requirement that groups first apply to local boards to establish alternative programs. Now, interested charter groups apply directly to the Minister of Education, and the details of those applications are not made public. Charter schools are funded by the province at the same level as public schools, but operate outside of the governance of publicly 22 Alberta School Counsellor / Spring 2022
In Calgary, École St. Gerard was closed, and its premises taken over by the STEM Innovation Academy charter school. As other public schools are monitored for potential closure in the face of low utilization, local parents worry that charter schools will move into these sites and market themselves to area parents, drawing students away and putting neighbouring public schools at greater risk of low enrolment. In Calmar, an agriculture-focused charter school opened in a former Black Gold School Division school that the board closed due to low enrolment. Charter schools don’t magically generate more students; for the school to be viable it will presumably need to market to families in nearby communities, which could lower the enrolment in other nearby public schools. While public schools are forced to deal with static or even declining budgets, private schools continue to receive the highest government subsidies in the country, with 70 per cent of the per-student funding that would be allocated to a student in the public system being transferred to the private schools chosen by those students’ parents. This is essentially a subsidy for businesses that cater to wealthy families. SOS has long been concerned that public funding of charter and private schools erodes public education, drawing away students and their associated funding while leaving public boards with fixed operating costs, and the requirement to serve a higher proportion of special needs students, since charter schools tend to market to highly educated families, and may present barriers that make them difficult for lower-income families to access. There is only one pot of money, and it is spent most fairly and effectively when it is pooled for the needs of all, not divided up to support a menu of boutique options under the guise of “parent choice”. We have only to look to the erosion of public education in the U.S. due to public funds being redirected to various private options to see where this path leads. Let’s demand better for all our kids. n
