NEWS PHOTO JEREMY APPEL Alberta Teachers Association president Jason Schilling was in the Hat Thursday for the annual Southeastern Alberta Teachers Convention at Medicine Hat College.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
The Alberta Teachers Association president swung through town Thursday to address the Southeastern Alberta Teachers Convention at Medicine Hat College.
Jason Schilling is no stranger to the Hat, nor the college, having worked there for a summer in the early aughts teaching English as a Second Language.
The News caught up with Schilling to discuss issues facing educators across the province during a busy two-day jaunt that saw him travel to conferences in his hometown of Lethbridge, the Hat, Calgary and Red Deer.
He identified three major points of concern he’s heard from teachers – class sizes and composition, the future of the updated K-12 curriculum and next week’s budget with its revamped education funding model.
The latter is a particular sore point. The government insisted it froze education spending at $8.223 billion, but documents the ATA received through a freedom of information request show funding was cut by $136 million across the board.
“I cannot reconcile what I’m hearing from the ministry and what I’m seeing in black and white. They don’t match, so what I tend to believe more is what my colleagues are telling me they see in their classrooms and what they’re experiencing,” said Schilling.
According to the documents obtained by the ATA, all but four school boards received less funding for 2019-2020 than they did in 2018-19 – Northern Gateway in Whitecourt, Northland in Peace River, Palliser in Lethbridge and Pembina Hills in Barrhead.
He says enrolment across Alberta is growing by 13,000-15,000 per year, so even a funding freeze would be a cut in all but name.
“It’s not like inflation is flat. A flat budget, not accounting for growth nor inflation, is in fact a cut,” Schilling said.
He does, however, give the government credit for continuing the nutrition program introduced in 2016.
“When I was through here a while ago, teachers talked about the importance of that nutrition program, how it’s benefited their students in their classrooms and homes even,” Schilling said. “It’s something I’ve heard more regionally down here than anywhere else.”
Skepticism of new funding model
A new funding model for K-12 education unveiled by Education Minister Adriana LaGrange at a Tuesday press conference leaves a lot of unknowns before next week’s budget, Schilling said.
The model reduces the number of grants to 15 from 36, which the ministry says will reduce the amount of time each board spends on paperwork.
“My concern about the reduction of grants however, is they eliminated the class size grant and they’re not collecting that data. I’m worried through this collapsing of grants that some of the information we needed in order to know how well schools are working will no longer be collected,” he said.
“I can’t believe we’re not collecting class size data when it’s one of the No. 1 concerns and issues teachers, as well as parents, have.”
The government’s move to fund students based on a three-year sliding average, rather than annual enrolment numbers, will punish school boards with continuously growing enrolment, said Schilling.
“With this rolling, weighted average, you are always going to be behind your enrolment,” he said. “Students need to be funded on day one when they enter that classroom, not two years down the road. I’m concerned about how that’s going to work in terms of funding schools properly, especially ones that are experiencing deep growth.”
Schilling acknowledged the new model will somewhat “cushion” rural school boards, such as the Prairie Rose School Division, who suffer from routinely declining numbers, but school boards with the most students will suffer.
He says he’s puzzled by the government changing the cap on administrative spending to a dollar figure from a percentage.
“That’s one of the questions we’ll have to have answered next week when we actually see the information that comes out to the boards,” said Schilling.
Another piece of uncertainty is the timeline for implementing a new K-12 curriculum, which was put on hold by the new government while the K-4 portion was in the process of being piloted.
“It was coming and it was coming, and then it got paused, so teachers are wondering what’s going to be happening with that,” said Schilling. “Teachers want to see a new curriculum come. They want to see it be successful.”
Overall, he says this uncertainty has been a major issue for the ATA membership.
“For an education system, predictability is what really makes education thrive. Uncertainty – curriculum, budget, all of the things we’ve seen over the last couple of months – is not healthy for an education system,” said Schilling.
