Rob Breakenridge: Scrapping private schools won't solve our problems

The issue isn't how the money is divided, it's that we're trying to do education on the cheap.

By: Rob Breakenridge

On the surface, the strike by (and lockout of) Alberta teachers has nothing to do with the existence of, or policy toward, private schools. There’s nothing specific in the demands from teachers or in previous bargaining that speaks directly to this issue.

However, it’s impossible to separate the Alberta government’s broader education policy from this particular labour dispute. Its approach to private education is casting a very large shadow on the current situation, and ultimately risks doing a disservice to both public and private schools.

For those who don’t know the details, Alberta has three kinds of schools operating at the K-12 level. The first type, of course, is the public schools — run by school boards, funded by taxes, teaching the provincially approved curriculum, and open to all students. Then there are the private schools, which are operated as businesses. They receive some provincial money for each student enrolled there, (more on that below) but make up the difference by charging tuition and fundraising. On top of that, Alberta also offers charter schools as an option. These schools receive public funding at the same level as public schools and don’t charge any tuition, but operate independently of school boards and can shape their approach to the Alberta curriculum with a specialized or unique focus. Some of these schools are more STEM- or arts-focused, for example, but there are also schools focused on serving the needs of ESL and Indigenous students.

This structure has never been without critics, but the Alberta government has inadvertently helped to raise the profile of this debate and, in doing so, undermined its own message about its willingness to address challenges in the public system and the financial limitations constraining it.

The first example of this occurred the very same night we learned that teachers had overwhelmingly rejected the province’s offer. That happened to coincide with the final in-person town hall for the Alberta Next panel, where an aggressive and ham-fisted attempt to shut down a question on public funding for private schools helped to make it the single biggest talking point of the evening.

It was a 17-year-old high school student, clearly worried about the impact of a strike, who attempted to ask that question. But before he could even finish, his microphone was cut off and he found himself being scolded by the panel’s moderator (who also happens to be the executive director of the premier’s office), who then suggested that the teen’s obstinacy was a byproduct of insufficient corporal punishment. An apology later followed, but the damage was done.

Earlier this week, we learned of a new effort by a Calgary high school teacher to harness the premier’s cynical revisions to the Citizen Initiative Act and force a referendum on the question of allocating public funds to private schools. Elections Alberta has approved the petition, and now organizers have 120 days to gather approximately 177,000 signatures.

With 51,000 angry and frustrated public teachers on strike — not to mention the tens of thousands in Edmonton and Calgary and elsewhere who recently rallied in support of teachers and public education — there’s a large, motivated constituency for such a push. And given how few Alberta families are able to take advantage of a private education, it’s easy enough to imagine a majority vote against the status quo.

But this doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game and it’s unfair to make private schools a scapegoat for problems in the public system. It’s the government that’s brought much of this on by simultaneously increasing public funding to private schools while allowing per-student funding in public education to decline to the point where it is now the lowest in Canada.

It then becomes much more difficult for the government to credibly argue that the proverbial cupboard is bare. It’s also much easier for critics to draw a straight line between increased public funding for private education and insufficient funding for public education.

It should be clarified that the public dollars received by private schools are primarily per-student grants. Right now, that grant represents about 70 per cent of the per-student grant for public schools, although that private grant was increased by just over 10 per cent in the most recent provincial budget (compared to a 4.5 per cent increase in per-student funding for public education). That alone represents almost half a billion dollars each year.

On top of that, though, the province is now including private schools in capital funding. The $8.6-billion School Construction Accelerator Program announced last year includes a pilot program for the construction of non-profit private schools.

Here’s the thing: Alberta desperately needs more schools — of all varieties. Alberta continues to grow rapidly, driven in no small part by the government’s previous efforts to lure young families to the province. The lack of foresight to plan for that growth is a key contributor to the pressures and strains on the system today.

The role of private schools in meeting this demand is controversial, and a major part of the rationale offered in defence of the ongoing strike. It shouldn’t be. Private schools are not exclusively the domain of the über-rich prepping their spoiled offspring for their Ivy League futures. Alberta’s landscape of school choice involves much more than just expensive, elite academies. What falls under the broader umbrella term of “independent” includes schools with a focus on kids with special needs or education with a religious focus.

Defenders of public education might bristle at what they see as a diversion of scarce funding away from the public system to subsidize private schools and operate the charter schools. But there is demand for these alternatives. Should having choice in education be exclusive to those with deep pockets? It would be cynical and cruel to deliberately starve public education so as to benefit private education, but eliminating these options for families isn’t the way to fix the public system.

If opponents of private schools had their way and they were shut down, what would that mean for public education? All of those kids would be pushed back into public schools, exacerbating the existing challenges and eating up much of the extra funding that would come from cutting off the public dollars that currently go to private schools. Some degree of per-student funding — that is, allowing some portion of a family’s education tax dollars to follow and pay for their own child’s education — is fair and reasonable. For many families, exploring options beyond the public system requires significant sacrifice. The aim is not ideological, but rather what’s best for the specific needs of their child. And many children with special needs are indeed being poorly served by placing them into integrated classes in the public system, where they struggle to get the extra care and attention they need to thrive.

At the heart of all of this is the unpleasant fact that Alberta is offering up education, for all students, on the cheap. Over the last decade, per-student public education funding in Alberta has seen an (inflation-adjusted) decline of 17.5 per cent. Of course that’s going to push the system to the breaking point. The resentment then fuelled by funding increases for private education is, in turn, posing a threat to school choice in Alberta.

The teachers’ strike doesn’t hinge on changes to the funding model for private schools. What certainly does matter is which side the public holds to be responsible for this disruption. In this regard, the Alberta government isn’t doing itself many favours.

Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer and host of The Line: Alberta Podcast. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca and and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com

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The Line: Alberta is a provincial bureau of The Line, edited by Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney. Email us at alberta@readtheline.ca.