Alberta government committee has $400M over 3 years to resolve class size and complexity problems

The Alberta government plans to use $400 million over the next three years — plus spending already earmarked in its existing budget documents — to pay for more teachers, educational assistants and better access to diagnostic testing, the education minister says.

As Premier Danielle Smith announced members of her new class size and complexity cabinet committee on Friday, co-chair and Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said that committee doesn’t have the power to allocate more than that $400 million to improving the school conditions that led to an unprecedented provincewide teachers' strike last month.

“I wouldn't discount it,” Nicolaides said of the promised funding increase. “I think it is a significant investment and I'm confident it will help move the needle in bringing class sizes down and in addressing some of the significant complexity challenges that we have.”

He added that the committee could ask the province's treasury board for more funding, if warranted.

This year’s budget for operating all Alberta schools is about $9.9 billion. Should the government opt to spend $133 million more a year, it would be about a 1.3 per cent increase in school operating funds. 

“It can look small, it can look like one or two per cent,” Nicolaides said. “But in real dollar value, it's quite significant. Four-hundred-million dollars gets us an incredible amount of new teachers.”

Three weeks after 51,000 public, Catholic and francophone teachers hit the picket lines, cancelling classes across Alberta, the provincial government passed the Back to School Act, also called Bill 2.

It ordered teachers back to work, imposed a four-year contract that 90 per cent of members had already voted down, and invoked the notwithstanding clause to insulate the government against legal challenges.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) is challenging the legislation in court, arguing it is unconstitutional.

While ordering teachers back to work, Smith promised to pay for school divisions to hire 3,000 net new teachers and 1,500 new educational assistants.

That promise of additional staffing was part of a September offer teachers voted down, saying that wasn’t enough staff to address the magnitude of the challenges they are facing.

Nicolaides clarified on Friday that some of the funding for those new staff is already accounted for in the existing provincial budget’s three-year-plan.

At issue in the contract dispute was teacher compensation, and what many teachers and parents say are deteriorating conditions in classrooms. Years of population growth, a demographic bulge of children and teens, along with an education funding formula that does not keep pace with enrolment growth has left school boards trimming spending and pleading for new school buildings.

The ATA says that has led to teachers grappling with larger classrooms full of students with varied needs — such as learning disabilities, those learning English, or mental health challenges —  and few additional personnel to help those children succeed.