School Daze
Eight point six billion dollars. That’s a lot of money. (This is the kind of nuanced commentary you come here for, right?)
I’m writing this on the fly, but here are a few observations about the Smith government’s announcement of investment in building new schools and renovating old ones.
We’re not talking about the Green Line debacle this morning.
In the flurry of numbers in the announcements, there were specific markers for what would be built within the next three years. In other words, there will be a lot of ribbons for the Premier to cut in the spring and summer of 2027, and a lot of Government of Alberta signs in front of construction sites in the fall of 2027. During the next provincial election.
To give the Premier credit, yesterday’s announcement demonstrated an ability to both walk and chew gum. For the party faithful packing their bags for the big showdown in Red Deer in November, she offered some dog whistles about immigration (“share our values”) and blame for Trudeau. The shift toward providing capital funding for non-profit private schools will be well-received in Red Deer as well. For the urban voters she’ll need in 2027, the Premier offered the hope that their kid won’t spend their entire time in school in converted libraries and cafeterias turned into makeshift classrooms.
The promise of funds for private schools and charter schools certainly increases the privatization of K-12 education, but the enthusiastic response from public boards counteracts this somewhat. This is a tricky issue for the NDP - on one hand, there isn’t huge support for public funding of private schools. On the other hand, lots of NDP supporters and potential NDP supporters will camp out all night to try to get their kid into a charter school, so going hard against this would be a strategic mistake.
In an interview with David Staples, the Premier indicated that the new schools will be provincially owned and leased to the boards. This got me to thinking about the provincially owned hospitals and the premier’s musings about scaring AHS with the threat of handing the hospital over to Covenant Health or another provider. It raises the question of whether the mechanism of ‘competition’ might be brought to these new provincially-owned schools.
That’s all for now.
My family ties to the public education system in Alberta run quite deep. My great grandfather was a school trustee in the early 1900s. Other relatives were esteemed university professors, including medicine, engineering, and human ecology. I also have other relatives who are school teachers. A sibling is an employee at the ATA.
The ability we have to read, write, and solve mathematical problems, are because of teachers. Doctors, nurses, engineers, and a whole bunch of other professionals had teachers teach them those skills, which benefit us immensely.
It's horrible how the UCP pretends to care about public education in Alberta.
As a side note, it would be awesome if we could take courses from Lisa Young, Jared Wesley, Andrew Leach, and Trevor Tombe.
Attacking teachers and the public education system in Alberta has been a tried and true hallmark of politicians, such as Ralph Klein, and the UCP are doing it too.
Ralph Klein gave so many teachers pink slips, and schools were grossly underfunded. This led to serious problems, such as overcrowded classrooms.
The UCP have treated teachers, and school support staff in Alberta like garbage, and have underfunded the public education system in this province too. Now, coincidentally, before her leadership review, Danielle Smith is trying to trick Albertans into thinking she cares, by dumping this money into building new schools for Alberta. They need teachers, and other staff, otherwise they will be big empty boxes.
Danielle Smith is handing more money to charter schools, as well as to private schools, and to other schools outside of the public education realm. That's not a good thing to do, because the public education system is still suffering from funding being diverted to these other schools.
At one point, Danielle Smith was a public school trustee. Her ideas were so out of touch, that the Alberta PCs had to can her.
What a big mess we have.