$9.9B not enough to save school system ‘at a breaking point’, says ATA

The Alberta Teachers Association says funding from the 2025 budget won't fix the problem in Alberta schools. CTV News Edmonton's Amanda Anderson has the story.

Educators and advocates are accusing the province of shortchanging students with this year’s budget.

Budget 2025 was tabled on Thursday and included $9.9 billion for education. The Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) said that isn’t enough to address what it calls a crisis in the province’s public schools.

According to the ATA, funding needed to increase by 15.8 per cent to bring Alberta’s per-student funding up closer to the national average.

The national average is about $10-a-day per student, Schilling said, while Alberta’s 2025 budget allows for $3.57-per-student per-year.

“We’re at a point where you can’t keep asking people to do more with less. We’re at a threshold here. We’re at a breaking point,” said ATA president Jason Schilling.

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Schilling said he’s been speaking with educators across the province who are dealing with the “largest classes they’ve ever had in their careers.”

“A colleague told me about his English 31 class of 42 students,” Schilling said. “He feels that his class is a lecture hall where students don’t get the attention or creativity that they need or deserve.

“Another teacher told me about her Grade 5 class of 32 … she’s struggling to meet the complex needs of so many kids; this constant struggle is making her consider leaving teaching at the end of the year. She simply can’t do it anymore.”

• No more space: Report details ballooning class sizes in Edmonton high schools

The ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) stopped publicly reporting on class sizes in 2019. On Tuesday, the province did not respond to a request for class size data.

‘How we’ve come to this crisis point’

Support our Students Alberta (SOSAlberta) said large class sizes aren’t the only issue facing Alberta schools.

Wing Li, the organization’s communications director, said problems include aging infrastructure, families struggling to find schools close to home and the loss of support from educational assistants.

Government data shows that between 2019 and the start of 2024, Alberta added 57,108 new students. Li said in that same time frame, Alberta’s education funding was essentially “frozen.”

In 2018-19, the Alberta NDP spent $8.2 billion on education. The next year, the newly-elected UCP spent $8.1 billion before dropping it to $7.7 billion in 2020-21.

In 2021-22 education funding was increased to $7.8 billion and it reached back up to 2018 levels in 2022-23 with a spend of $8.3 billion. Last year, the UCP spent $8.8 billion.

“It was an erosion for several years,” Li said. “Which means cuts, right? When you have more students to cater to, but the same pot (that’s) not really growing much.”

Given the existing strain on public schools, and the rising costs faced by school districts, Schilling and Li both said this year’s $9.9 billion isn’t enough.

“We actually really needed targeted extra investment to catch up. But with this budget, we will continue to fall behind and the crisis will worsen,” Li said.

Education Minister Demetris Nicolaides said the province has been increasing funding to school authorities since 2022.

He said Budget 2025 will go toward building and renovating 122 new and existing schools, and will allow school authorities to hire up to 4,000 teachers and support staff over the next three years.

Schilling said recruitment and retention are unlikely to be successful given the conditions the ATA is hearing about from educators.

“They’re going to walk into schools and say, ‘This is not what I signed up for,’ and turn around and leave,” he said. “We know that the attrition rate of teachers within their first five years is about 50 per cent, and that’s mostly because of what is happening in our schools.

“If we want to retain teachers into public education, we need to address the working conditions and the students' learning conditions.”

Minister Nicolaides did not respond to questions about why funding wasn’t increased to bring Alberta in line with the national average.

He said the latest results from the Programme for International Student Assessment, showing Alberta ranking first in Canada in reading and science, are a “clear indication that Alberta’s students are truly receiving a world-class education.”

School Board Response

Nicolaides pointed out Budget 2025 includes changes to how school districts are funded – something school boards have been advocating for.

The new formula is based on a two-year average adjusted enrolment, with 70 per cent of funding based on projections for the second year.

The province said the new formula will increase funding for growing school authorities while protecting them from extreme cuts when enrolment falls.

The Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB) said it’s glad to see an overall increase in the education budget, as well as changes to the funding formula.

It said it is expecting another 5,000 new students in the fall – putting the division’s enrollment at more than 125,000 students.

EPSB will need “continued investment,” it said, to keep pace with growth and inflationary cost pressures; it expects – given that growing enrollment – this year’s increases will “result in a status quo impact to our division’s budget,” EPSB said.

Edmonton Catholic Schools also said it’s pleased to see more education funding this year, as half the school board’s schools are at or over capacity.

It said it will know more about how the budget will impact it once individual funding profiles are received in coming weeks.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson