When the public system is chronically underfunded, how exactly are they supposed to open up alternative programs within the system? Those are the kinds of luxuries that come with average or above average funding.
I have thrown around some numbers around charter schools,
they came straight from the government of Alberta website that was linked to by
Jason Scott. The government was gifting $123M to charter schools in the 2024 budget (while refusing to allocate any additional funding to the public system or allocate any budget to build any of the new schools that they promised) and more specifically, gift wrapped $43M to build a building for a charter school in Calgary (Foundations for the Future Charter Academy).
The drama of Jason's post is that he says the charter school then hired Rajan Sawhney's 20 something daughter a spot on their board of directors. For those that may recall the last UCP leadership race, Sawhney was one of the other people running against Smith. It was a nice little perk to give in exchange for Sawhney's loyalty.
So while the "per student" funding may be the same in the government budget, they are able to do other things, like gift the charter school a $43M building for free. Then at the same time, the charter school is able to accept private funds to allow their program to exceed what the public system can deliver.
The school itself is a non-profit but that just means that in their year end finances they cannot have a profit. So any money that might be viewed as a profit can be spent on *anything* to get it out of the profit column. That spending of money is typically where grifts occur.
Charter schools in Alberta started as an innovation incubator to develop new learning methods and then reintegrate back into the public system. The problem is that Charter schools never reintegrate and instead have morphed into quasi private schools that collect more public funding than regular private schools.
To get to the punchline, charter schools should be dumped as a failed program. The individual schools should be given a choice to either reintegrate into the public system or to convert to full private schools. This would fulfill your first comment to have more spots for specialized programs in the public system by having these schools inside the public system.
At the same time, private schools should be fully defunded or also be reintegrated into the public system.
Eliminating a tiered education system is an important step to building a world class education system.