Alberta school boards say they shouldn't be using savings to pay teachers

While the Alberta government touts an upcoming net provincial increase in school staff this fall, growing school boards say drawing from their savings accounts to hire more teachers is unsustainable.

The provincial government says school divisions and charter schools will pull millions of dollars out of their reserves to help pay for approximately 800 more teachers and 790 more support staff in the coming school year.

"I'm thrilled to see more teachers and educational assistants will be hired in the coming school year," Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said in a press release on Wednesday.

LaGrange's acting press secretary, Erin Allin, also said school divisions with more than two per cent enrolment growth will also qualify for a new $7 million grant to help them handle the influx of pupils.

The population of Alberta K-12 students continues to grow. The ministry projects that more than 760,000 students will enrol in school this September— a jump of 2.1 per cent from the previous year.

Meanwhile, growing school boards continue to warn that the province's $142 million increase to the education budget isn't keeping pace with inflation or enrolment growth. The flux in staffing for the coming school year also varies widely across Alberta.

Leduc-based Black Gold School Division is drawing more than $2.4 million from its savings — with the minister's permission — and almost all of it will pay for staff to accommodate an anticipated 4.3 per cent enrolment increase.

But, the division also budgeted for 13 fewer education assistants in classrooms to help pay for more teachers.

Superintendent Bill Romanchuk said in an email on Friday he hopes extra funding from a one-year learning disruption grant announced in June will help to hire some of them back.

"Drawing from reserves for any organization is unsustainable," Romanchuk wrote. "With this in mind, we are working to build capacity in each school to minimize the effect of reduced staffing in upcoming years."

Also dipping into savings to pay for staff is Edmonton Public Schools. School board chair Trisha Estabrooks said half of the $10 million draw down will pay for salaries to help educate an extra 2,800 students expected to enrol this fall.

Reserves should instead be used for unanticipated costs and emergencies, she said.

With a provincial funding formula that sees grants lag behind enrolment growth, the division calculates it will be short of the funding equivalent for 1,700 students.

"This is indicative of a broken funding model, right?" Estabrooks said on Thursday. "For large school divisions, this model doesn't work for us."

To soften that blow, the education ministry is giving some school divisions "bridge funding," which they intend to phase out over time.

The $7 million set aside for school divisions experiencing exceptional growth is a drop in the bucket compared to the need, Estabrooks said.

Allin said that exceptional growth funding could be higher if enrolment exceeds predictions.

Phasing out a parallel system of online schooling that was in place for much of the COVID-19 pandemic also means Edmonton Public is planning to employ 218 fewer teachers and 128 fewer support staff this coming year.

Similarly, the Calgary Board of Education is preparing for an influx of more than 1,500 new students – enough to fill a high school — with an increase of 12 full-time teaching staff. Calgary Catholic Schools is expecting 543 more pupils this year and will have three fewer teachers to work with.

Alberta Teachers' Association president Jason Schilling says asking school divisions to dip into rainy day funds to cover the ongoing cost of doing business is problematic.

"It tells me that the government's not serious about funding education appropriately," he said Thursday.

In addition to larger class sizes, teachers are seeing increasingly complex classes populated by students with more diverse needs.

The ministry is also handing schools $50 million more than it promised in the spring budget to help them pay the costs of a new collective agreement for teachers.