Blue ribbon panel suggests changes

By Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean Times Contributor

The province’s blue ribbon panel has suggested changes to Alberta education funding.
When the panel was created by Premier Jason Kenney in May to review Alberta’s finances, the panel found that Alberta could be saving $10 billion a year by reducing spending to match that of other provinces. The problem of course is that Alberta has a lot of benefits other provinces just don’t offer.
In delivering the findings of the report, Janice MacKinnon, panel chair and former Saskatchewan finance minister, identified K-12 education as one area where Alberta spends more.
“The panel recommends the Alberta government work with education stakeholders to decrease the percentage of government funding that goes to administration and governance (currently 24.6 per cent) to a level comparable to British Columbia (17 per cent),” said the report.
Considering that Alberta “fully” funds a public and separate (Catholic and Francophone) education system with three separate governance models, separate buildings, transportation and all costs associated with running separate programs, it’s actually impressive that Alberta’s costs aren’t more than double that of British Columbia. B.C. only provides full funding for the public system.
Secondly, the panel recommended the Alberta government “completely review and revise the current education funding formula to ensure enrolment growth is addressed, and to provide incentives for sharing services and achieving better education outcomes for students.”
The panel used the spending of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec as comparisons, but Alberta’s funding model for choice in education is much more generous than the comparison provinces.
Ontario does not provide any public funds for private schools although they do fully fund a Catholic (separate) school system. British Columbia does not fund a Catholic (separate) school system but “some independent schools in B.C. receive funding at either 50 per cent or 35 per cent of their local public school district rate.”
Quebec does not fully fund either a Catholic (separate) school system or private schools; instead, non-public education receives a maximum of 60 per cent of public funding amounts.
In addition to fully funding separate Catholic and Francophone schools, Alberta funds private schools at 70 per cent.
“Sharing services” has also been a point of contention in the recent past.
In 2014, the City of Red Deer, the province and three school boards, Catholic, public and Francophone, came to an agreement to build a joint-use facility in a major school construction project. The three schools would have shared gyms, a “world class science lab,” theatre spaces and libraries.
“If we were to pool all of our funds and share the space, we could build a state-of-the-art-facility,” said Pieter Langstraat, a former Red Deer Public School District superintendent in the fall of 2014. “That was the idea.”
However, that isn’t what happened. The Catholic board backed away from the plan in the fall of that year citing a conflict with board policy. The Alberta Catholic School Trustee’s Association (ACSTA) Fundamental Principles (2016) state as its first principle the first choice is “free-standing Catholic schools on separate sites”.
“The ACSTA and its member boards oppose the joint use of school buildings with public school boards in any manner that has the effect of undermining or interrupting the full permeation of Catholic values and beliefs,” according to the second principle.
Canada’s commitment to separate school education for persons who had the right and privilege at the time (English and French Catholics and Protestants), is enshrined in Section 93 of The British North America Act of 1867 (renamed the Constitution Act in 1982). Alberta’s commitment is outlined in section 17 (1) of the Alberta Act of 1905.
Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta are the only provinces left fully funding separate Catholic school systems. In Saskatchewan, private or independent school students receive between 50 and 80 per cent funding.