Also see the 1998 ARCHIVE OF EDUCATION NEWS STORIES
And for original articles by Eugene W. Plawiuk see:
THE CRISIS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
PRIVATIZATION OR DEMOCRATIZATION
For News Across Canada see EDUCATION CRISIS ACROSS CANADA
PROVINCIAL REVIEW OF SCHOOL COUNCILS
In general, the Alberta Teachers'
Association (ATA) applauds the recommendations
contained in the report on the Minister's Forums on
School Councils; however, a recommendation to
exclude teachers and principals as voting members
of school councils should be soundly rejected, says
Larry Booi, ATA president. Booi made these
comments in response to an MLA task force report
that calls for teachers and principals to become
ex-officio or non-voting members of school councils.
Mirroring the sentiments of other parent groups, area school councils say
they're getting stuck with too much fund-raising.
Meanwhile, council members complain they have too little influence in how their
schools are run.
Those are the messages councils have been giving a provincial review.
Some council members at a forum Saturday said cutbacks in education are part
of the reason they lack influence -- since there's nothing for discretionary
spending, there is little room to advise school administrators on where to spend.
Brenda Brindle, chair of Edmonton's Lendrum council and a member of the
Avalon council, said the province gave school councils a role in such areas as
staffing and programs.
"But when we meet and review a budget and talk about the issues, ultimately
we come back to money.
"You can't have the programs you want, and fulfil the dreams you have for
education, if you don't have adequate funding."
Saturday's forum was part of a series across the province to review the way
councils have functioned since the government called for their formation in 1994
legislation.
As part of the review, the government has asked councils, council members,
parents, teachers, boards and others to fill in so-called workbooks.
So far, the workbooks indicate that while councils want to cut back on
fund-raising, they don't want to eliminate it, says Dick Baker, a consultant who
is overseeing the workbook responses.
In particular, the review shows councils want less involvement in finding money
for playground equipment, as well as school lunch programs, Baker said.
They also want a smaller part of raising funds for technological equipment and
field trips.
Instead, councils are calling for more of a role on school programs, student
achievement and discipline, said Baker.
The organization which speaks for parents to the provincial
government is struggling to get by on a shoestring budget
and the work of too few volunteers, says its president.
The Alberta Home and School Councils' Association has
power, but getting parents and schools involved is a
constant problem, president Christine Ayling said in an
interview during the association's annual conference in
Edmonton Saturday.
The Alberta government has done a lot over the last seven years to help low-income children and their families,
but it could do even more.
That is the conclusion of the Joint Stakeholder Committee on Children and Poverty, which released a progress
report on child poverty October 5. The committee consists of representatives of the Alberta Teachers'
Association (ATA) and more than 20 other organizations from across the province.
One thousand Albertans converged on Edmonton's Shaw Conference Centre October 5 and 6 for the first
annual Children's Forum.
Armed with the goal of improving the lives of the province's children, participants generated a number of
recommendations. They include maintaining and building on earlier support for children and families,
developing a one-stop violence prevention program and developing a comprehensive approach to sexual health
education.
The report has been posted on the Internet at
Responses should be directed to
Alberta Learning, Regional Office and Native Education Branch, 3rd Floor Devonian Building East Tower,
11160 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T5K 0L2.
Should social studies ensure children know the facts and figures of history, or
teach them how to be good citizens in a multicultural society?
That's the question at the heart of the debate surrounding Alberta's coming
social-studies curriculum, one of several issues to be discussed at a conference
this weekend.
About 400 teachers are expected to attend Thresholds '99, billed as "the last
social-studies conference of the century." Your humble administrator of this page and many other activist web sites will be presenting a workshop on the Internet and Social Activism at this conference.
In last Monday's Opening Lines column, Herald editorial page
editor Peter Stockland wrote that teachers were spared
embarrassment after a lockout by the Catholic board hurried a
labour dispute to an end. Some readers took issue with
Stockland's views.
SEPTEMBER 99
FEBRUARY - AUGUST 99
Go To Labour Net Canada
(R)EDMONTON: THE RADICAL EDMONTON PAGE
Page design © Copyright 1999 Eugene W. Plawiuk.
Public education in Alberta is desperately in need of
more money, parents in Edmonton told Learning
Minister Lyle Oberg on Tuesday.
b>
Municipal ratepayers will be spared major hikes in education taxes
next year while a government committee studies ways of making the tax system
fairer to property owners across the province.
The government is freezing the education tax rate for a year and capping
increases in assessments to soften the blow of tax increases resulting from
rising property values.
Municipal ratepayers will be spared major hikes in education taxes
next year while a government committee studies ways of making the tax system
fairer to property owners across the province.
The government is freezing the education tax rate for a year and capping
increases in assessments to soften the blow of tax increases resulting from
rising property values.
The City of Calgary wants the province to help keep "loners" in
Alberta schools.
Citing recent school shootings attributed to student drop-outs or those
isolated from the mainstream, Calgary has asked for more counselling
resources to help troubled children cope. The resolution is one that will
be debated during this week's Alberta Urban Municipalities
Association Conference in Edmonton.
The Edmonton public school district has given up trying to entice the Catholic
school board into sharing a new school in Twin Brooks.
canadian students are heading back to university,
but more of them than ever aren't going back to class.
The last few years have seen a near-exponential growth in the popularity of
post-secondary education through the Internet.
Online visionaries see a world of lifelong learning, available anywhere,
anytime. Others say traditional, campus-based Canadian universities aren't
adapting to new competition from both Canada and abroad.
"It's going to become increasingly normal for students to decide which of the
classes they're going to take face-to-face and which they're going to take
through distance education," says Clive Keen, executive director for
Alberta's Athabasca University, one of Canada's leading distance educators.
Grande Prairie Regional College and its faculty appear to be no further forward in their contract negotiations and could be
heading for binding arbitration.
The college board of governors called for binding arbitration in June, but as long as the two sides were talking, arbitration was
put off, said board chairman Fred Estlin.
Arbitration is scheduled for later in September, Estlin said.
The combining of K-12 and post-secondary education into one government ministry isn't meeting with glowing praise locally.
"I'm extremely worried about it. If times were tough now, it's going to get worse," was GPRC student president Garth Hardy's
gloomy reaction to the announced Department of Learning.
There is already a funding crunch among post-secondary institutions, Hardy said, and post-secondary institutions are going to
look bad if they fight for more.
"It means we're going to have to be wrestling with high schools now and I don't want to be associated with that," said Hardy,
serving a second term as president of Grande Prairie Regional College's student association.
It may not be all bad, said the chairman of GPRC's board of governors, but he does have his preference.
"Selfishly, I'd much rather have a minister just for advanced education," Fred Estlin said.
City public school supporters will head to the polls June 22 to pick their
new trustee, after five McMurrayites filed nomination papers for the job
Tuesday morning.
Former trustee Kathy Baker, Westwood high school council chairman Jeff
Thompson, Timberlea school council chairman Glenn Doonaco, defeated
October 1998 candidate Joel Lipman and twice-defeated municipal council
candidate Keith McGrath have thrown their hats into the ring.
After the acclamations of vice-chairwoman Rhonda Reich in 1994 and
Baker in 1997 made byelections unnecessary, seeing so many candidates
come out came as a pleasant surprise to district secretary-treasurer Randy
Hoffman.
"I think it reclaims democracy. I like that there's new names here: I think
that's positive. We should definitely have a forum to let people put faces
and ideas to these names."
When asked why there's so much interest, Hoffman pointed out there's
been more coverage recently of education in the big-city media, and people
are now more aware of how school cutbacks are affecting the classrooms.
"I'm not sure the issues have really changed since those byelections, but my
sense is there's a greater awareness of them. I think the awareness is getting
greater and greater."
Students, parents and teachers may
well be facing larger class sizes in the next school
year due to decreased teaching staff and increased
enrolment, says Alberta Teachers' Association
President Bauni Mackay.
Mackay was referring to the projected layoffs of 733
teachers in Alberta's public and separate school
systems. "We have heard from almost every school
division in Alberta and based on their projections,
there could be as many as 733 fewer teachers in
Alberta classrooms next year."
Teachers employed by the Greater St
Albert Catholic Regional Division No 29 voted
overwhelmingly last night to reject a proposal for
settlement from their school board. The board's 416
teachers have been without a collective agreement
since August of 1998.
At issue is the board's demand that it be given the
unfettered right to impose on teachers whatever
working conditions it decides. Clause 17.1 of the
current agreement prevents the board from
unilaterally changing existing board policies on
teacher working conditions. Although teachers have
put forward reasonable alternatives, the board has
issued an ultimatum to teachers related to the
removal of this clause. In so doing, the board has
chosen to ignore 29 years of good and productive
relations under the workings of the current clause.
Alberta's education minister has backed away from plans to create one provincewide school board to oversee francophone
education, to the great joy of the local francophone board.
"All the hard work we've done since January has paid off," said Chantal Monfette, board chairwoman of the Conseil scolaire du
Nord-Ouest which operates schools in Falher and Grande Prairie.
Monfette said she had an inkling of which way the tide was turning following a meeting of the school boards, chaired by an
MLA, in late April. There was a coming together of opinion that forming one francophone board for the whole province was not
the best option.
Opposition from MLAs and school boards in northern Alberta was strong enough to persuade Gary Mar to put the plan on
hold, said Kelley Charlebois, a spokesman for the minister.
However, he said the minister ''remains convinced that a single authority would still be the best route.''
The decision means francophone school boards in the St. Paul area and the Peace Country will remain intact.
But the Edmonton-based North Central francophone school board will be consolidated with Red Deer, Lethbridge and Fort
McMurray, said board chairman Denis Tardif.
The Alberta Catholic School Trustees' Association will "refuse" to share facilities with other
school systems, says the association's president.
"To have one facility shared by two different philosophies in education is absolutely
inappropriate," said ACSTA president Lois Burke-Gaffney of Calgary.
"(When) you have two opposite philosophies (sharing one building) you get into squabbling over
who is going to use what when."
Separate schools require that religious symbols be "very visible" throughout the school and often
use gymnasiums for liturgical services. "You get two different administrations bickering over that
kind of thing, it simply doesn't work," Burke-Gaffney said.
"You can't have two different philosophies operating in the same building."
The Edmonton Catholic school board recently rejected a proposal to share a building with the public board in the Twins Brooks
area because Catholic and public students would have had too many common areas in the proposed joint multi-use facility.
Areas such as the gymnasium, library and staff lounge would have been shared by the Catholic and public school.
Six years of funding cutbacks have left Alberta's education and health care
systems in a perilous state, says Nancy MacBeth.
The Alberta Liberal Leader said education and health care are the "two
pillars of society," and deserve greater attention from the provincial
government.
"We have some very run-down schools in this province," said MacBeth
Thursday during a speech at a Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce
luncheon.
She added Alberta's average class size exceeds more than 30 students
which she says is too high a ratio for effective learning.
Maintaining a good education "infrastructure" is essential for Alberta's social
and financial prosperity, she said.
Injecting more money into government programs isn't necessarily the antidote
for helping troubled children in the province, says the head of a new provincial
task force formed in the wake of last month's shootings at a Taber high
school.
Organizers of a provincewide petition calling for the government to boost
education funding announced Monday they have gathered more than 11,000
names.
But Education Minister Gary Mar was unmoved by the petition, whose names
have been tabled in the legislature over the past three months.
Mar argued already-announced government plans to increase education
funding by $600 million over the next three years is the "appropriate amount
of money" to spend.
"Over time, in future years, I don't know what will happen," said Mar. "But
for now, there's no intention of looking back at this issue again."
Cathy Staring-Parrish of Edmonton, one of three parents who organized the
Save Our Schools (SOS) petition, said the $600 million earmarked by the
government isn't enough to keep up with the demands of the school system
when inflation and student enrolment growth are taken into account.
Schools across the province are "financially stressed" with continuing staff
layoffs and growing class sizes, despite the government's claim of adequate
funding, she said.
"The simple message is that schools are underfunded and that there are costs
that continue to increase for which the schools are not properly
compensated," said Staring-Parish.
The Alberta government should stop looking at
education as a cost and start treating it like an investment, a frustrated
mother said Monday.
"We hope to reinforce the message we are trying to get through to this
government that there are serious problems in public education today," said
Donna White of Save Our Schools, a provincewide group pressuring the
Klein government for better schools, more funding and lower class sizes.
The three Edmonton mothers who formed SOS presented an 11,000-name
petition to the legislature Monday calling on Education Minister Gary Mar to
review the department's $3.3-billion spending plan.
The Catholic school board has rejected a proposal to share a building with
the public board in the Twin Brooks neighbourhood.
But the door is not closed on the idea, said Garnet McKee, deputy director
of business services for the Catholic school district. It's just that Catholic and
public students would have had too many common areas in the "joint
multi-use facility" proposed by the Ventin Group.
"We are willing to pursue other models. That one is unacceptable to us ... It
just integrates too many base elements for us," McKee said.
McKee said he is waiting to hear from the public school officials on whether
Ventin has another proposal that would keep the Catholic and public sides
more separate.
n the last month, 12-year-old Greg has been kicked out of school three times
after throwing temper tantrums in the time-out room.
He overturned his desk, kicked the door and screamed. Sounds like an obvious
case for suspension, right?
Except Greg has Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder that can cause
rapid, involuntary movement, shouting, swearing and other "tics."
His mother thinks he is unfairly treated by the Edmonton public school board's
policy of zero tolerance for student defiance, aggression and violence.
From 1991-98, the number of suspensions has more than tripled to 6,543 from
2,151.
Some parents feel the policy comes down too hard on students with disorders
that are hard or impossible to control, such as Tourette syndrome, autism and
attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
It's a situation Laurie Wilson-Larson has run into before. The Edmonton woman
has worked for the past eight years as an independent advocate for families
across Alberta involved in disputes with schools.
She's now working for about 30 parents with special-needs children.
"I see a lot of kids labelled as behaviour-disordered. Instead of dealing with the
reason for the behaviour, they're not treating them, they're suspending them."
One reason is that years of cuts in education budgets put pressure on teachers
to do more with less, she says.
Peace Wapiti School Board is prepared to make a deal with the education minister over his marks-based incentive program.
Trustees approved the drafting of a proposal Thursday to request the rural school district become a control group for Gary
Mar's School Performance Incentive Program (SPIP).
As a control group, the board would receive its portion of the incentive program's funds in advance and put it toward hiring
teachers, reducing pupil-teacher ratios and increasing professional development for educators, said Beaverlodge-area trustee
Elouise Johnson. Mar could then use Peace Wapiti as a standard by which to judge the other 60 school boards in the province,
said Johnson, who pitched the idea to the education minister recently.
"He said to me, 'I will consider it,'" she said.
School superintendent Gerry Mazer thinks the control group concept has merit as long as the line drawn for achievement isn't
pushed up every year. Soon school districts would have reached as high as they could go, but no more money would be going
in.
Mazer is not a fan of SPIP or Peace Wapiti's proposal, preferring that money is given directly to school jurisdictions without
academic strings attached.
"Throughout the West ... we are slipping away from
[the] simple principle of high-quality public
education. And, in doing so, we are further undermining democracy."
This quote, from the University of Alberta and Parkland Institute’s 1999 study Contested
Classrooms, sums up the sorry state of public education in Alberta. Government cost-cutting, for
whatever motive, has opened the door to corporate infringement. Companies increasingly regard
classrooms as captive audiences for their products and philosophies and pursue marketing
opportunities under the guise of education. And in our increasingly unchecked system, that puts the
best interests of students--and perhaps society--at risk.
Clarence McDonald is having a little trouble figuring out why a group he represents, Youth In
Motion (YIM), is having to field a rash of media calls lately. McDonald became involved with YIM
a couple months ago when owner Margaret Folk asked him to help her work out a sticky situation.
YIM is just one of the city’s for-profit organizations that was using the name of specific non- profit
organizations--in this case, the Youth Emergency Shelter Society, when selling their bags of candy.
McDonald doesn’t deny that YIM makes money; he simply wants it known that what he’s trying to
do first and foremost is help troubled teens get back on the right track.
"I want to stress that the kids are getting money for this," said McDonald.
But there’s a problem. Representatives of non-profit groups get irked when these companies imply
an affiliation with their organizations. Why? One of their biggest beefs is that the groups making
money from the sale of their products are simply not charity-driven.
What happened at Fairview College should be a wake-up call to rural schools and the government, Thompson said.
Fairview College announced last month it would be laying off 37 staff and cutting several programs, including its one-of-a-kind
beekeeping program, in order to respond to financial constraints. It will also privatize some support services.
Support workers at Fairview College will visibly protest the institution's intention to contract out their jobs.
The members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees will be picketing their workplace between noon and 2 p.m. on
Wednesday, May 5 - a show of solidarity in reaction to the college's intention to call for tenders to perform work currently
being performed by 15 caretaking staff.
According to AUPE staff representative Brain Randall, college president Daniel Dunwoody is the same person who was
involved five years ago when caretaking staff took a 25-27 per cent cut in pay, or about $400 a month, as the price of keeping
their jobs.
The education portion of property taxes could be phased out and replaced by
a special education tax, Premier Ralph Klein suggested Sunday.
Klein cited that as an option for government consideration after delegates at a
Conservative policy conference recommended phasing out the property tax
levy which raises $1.3 billion annually -- just over $700 million of it from
residential taxes -- for education.
Klein called the idea, which in most communities is about half or a little more
of the total property tax bill, a "very interesting concept."
And for the second time in the past week, Klein floated the idea of replacing
the education property tax with a "special" education tax.
"It would come off the property tax but then there would be a commensurate
increase in a tax that would come to the province."
An MLA task force was struck to study the issue of removing the education
property tax after the idea was recommended in a report by a
government-appointed committee made up of municipal administrators.
The committee suggested the government could fund education entirely
through general revenues.
Premier Ralph Klein is still holding out the possibility of spending any budget
surplus on education, but he warned Edmonton's boards not to count on it,
says Catholic chairperson Ron Zapisocki.
Zapisocki and his public school board counterpart, George Nicholson, had
dinner with the premier and Education Minister Gary Mar on Monday.
Nicholson wouldn't comment on their discussions.
If you really want the province to spend more on education,
strike fear in the hearts of MLAs by convincing them they'll
lose a lot of votes if they don't, political analyst Rich Vivone
said Monday evening.
Wednesday's announcement that millions of dollars more will
be spent on education was a pleasant surprise for school
boards, teachers and parents.
But all are waiting for today's provincial budget to see how
much of the nearly $600-million increase promised by 2001-02
is new money and how many strings are attached.
WestView Regional Health Authority (WRHA) Board chair Peter Woloshyn doesn't think the
recent firing of the Lakeland Regional Health (RHA) Authority board by Health Minister Halvar
Jonson will set a precedent, but the president of the Canadian Health Care Guild (CHCG) isn't too
sure.
The mid-February firing of the Lakeland RHA Board should serve as a warning to other boards,
such as WestView, who are currently carrying deficits, said CHCG president Margaret Nelson.
"Appointed boards are at the beck and call of the government, and boards being removed for not
conforming further confirms the need for elected boards who are responsible to voters," said
Nelson.
While parents in central Edmonton worry about their Catholic schools being closed, parents in newer areas of the city wait for
theirs to be built.
Results on 1998 achievement tests should be raising warning flags for Alberta's school districts, says an education consultant.
"We are still willing to accept that we can have mediocrity. There's a great sense of denial here," said Denis Lapierre, of School
Works Inc. a company which ranks individual schools based on results on the provincewide tests.
His comments stem from the release of a list ranking 57 of the province's publicly-funded school boards from the results of their
Grade 3, 6, and 9 math and language arts tests in 1998. The list was created by the Calgary-area school district placing first
from Alberta Education data, and leaked to a Calgary newspaper.
Alberta teachers are pleased the
government has decided to reverse its decision to
eliminate the Board of Reference, a 73-year-old
process for resolving disputes between individual
teachers and their school boards.
Education Minister Gary Mar announced yesterday he
would introduce an amendment to Bill 20 to remove all
sections dealing with the Board of Reference.
Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) president Bauni
Mackay welcomed the announcement and
congratulated the minister on his flexibility.
"The government has listened and responded to
teachers' concerns," she said. "Teachers will retain
their right to due process in the event their contracts
are terminated or suspended."
Protesting has become an art form at Grande Prairie Regional College this year - so much so that fine arts students have joined
the fray.
Artwork of all types at the college was wrapped up and covered from view Thursday, part of a protest organized by about a
dozen Fine Arts and Interactive Digital Design (IDD) students.
They're unhappy with the cutbacks proposed in the 1999-2000 draft budget that could be ratified by the college's board of
governors Tuesday.
"We had to make some kind of an impact," said Anke Buruma, a second-year Fine Arts student.
The proposal calls for the elimination of a fine arts instructor, a sociology instructor, a librarian, as well as the Writing Centre - a
drop-in classroom where instructors provide volunteer writing instruction.
New student health funding from the province has cornered school boards and left them little room for movement, local officials
say.
Alberta has allocated more than $25 million more this year for student health needs as part of its Children's Initiative.
That's in addition to what school boards across the province currently budget for those needs.
Funding currently pays for speech therapy, services for disabled students, emotional and mental counselling, among others.
But it's not what the Grande Prairie public school district had in mind.
Money saved from paying down the provincial debt could be
used to phase out the education portion of residential property
taxes, says a government-appointed committee.
Terry Fortin will step down as superintendent of Edmonton Catholic Schools after five years of
administrative restructuring and financial restraint.
Fortin, 54, announced at the board's March 15 public meeting that he will not seek an extension to his current contract, which
expires Aug. 1.
At least six intervenors will speak up on behalf of the Public School Boards Association of Alberta in its Supreme Court
challenge of the provincial government.
Trustee associations from British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario as well as Ontario's Catholic teachers and public school
board's associations, and the Catholic section of the Saskatchewan trustees' association have sought intervenor status in the
case.
A three-year, $600-million funding boost to the province's
education budget is expected to be announced today by the
Alberta government. Senior sources say the huge increase,
the largest this decade, will see the price tag for education
hit $3.7 billion by the year 2002, almost half a billion dollars
more than projected in the government's own business
plans.
Morale is still high and teachers are still working hard five years after major funding cuts chopped their wages and added to their
workload, said some of those attending the Mighty Peace Teachers' Convention Thursday.
Canmore parents may have to pay more - perhaps as much as $400 per year - for their children to get to school in the next
millennium.
Once Canmore reaches a population of 10,000, the Canadian Rockies School Division's provincial transportation funding could
decrease substantially, CRSD secretary-treasurer Dave MacKenzie told the School Board of Trustees last Wednesday
Disputes between members of the Griffiths-Scott School Council have finally put the
organization's neck in a noose.
The group passed a motion during a Feb. 22 meeting to disband and now awaits
approval from Wetaskiwin Regional Public Schools before the request is sent to
Education Minister Gary Mar.
The Peace River School Division has claimed that the province has cut funding for a number of its special needs students
midway through the academic year. Division officials insist the cuts have resulted in a unexpected budget crunch that may call
into question if services will be available for these students next fall.
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