[Wolven]

Originally Posted by you&me

Not that I don't believe you, but where does the $461mm come from?

It comes from the actual government budget. Instead of trying to napkin math and reverse engineer numbers out of other speculative numbers, just go look at the budget or news articles about the budget. $461M this year, next year they are forecasting $511M and then another $188M after that (it is unclear to me if they are increasing by $188M per year for 2 years or spread out over two years).

Originally Posted by you&me

In an earlier post (maybe in the other thread), I broke down the math... It's something like 38,000 private school students * $11,464 in per student funding *.70, which comes out to just under $305mm... Everyone seems to accept the $11,464 per student and the 70% funding; maybe the private student enrolment is much higher than the source I'd found, but it's hard to explain a 50+ % discrepancy...

In any case, I still feel my point from my last post stands - $461mm is still a drop in a $10B bucket... If that was eliminated and redirected to public school pupils, it would mean a whopping 6% increase in per student funding, or $658 - still far less than other provinces. And that doesn't account for any redistribution of students back to the public system that would likely occur if funding was dropped and parents had to pay full freight tuition (negating, or offsetting some of those new funding $).

To look at it another way, that would barely cover the 3,000 teachers that gov't keeps harping about, that everyone says is woefully inadequate, especially without having somewhere to put them... 1, 2 maybe 3 teachers per school in the province. Peanuts. Bupkis. Nothin'.

And while railing against the elite seems to be some on CP's favourite past time, let's not forget that not all private schools are gilded palaces for rich kids - many serve niches such as student athletes or those with learning disabilities.

Now all that said, I'm not arguing that what the UCP is doing to education in Alberta isn't atrocious... but again, I've said this before - what's ####ing new? Classes were over crowded when I was a student 30 years ago; we were jammed into portables, or bussed across the city.

$461M is just the starting point. The government also gives grants to private schools that are hidden in other line items. The amount of public money that gets served up to benefit a small number of kids is absurd. The number of kids in the private school system is a drop in the bucket and should not be funded by the public sector. (yes, I flipped your drop in the bucket phrase back to you but with it being about the number of kids instead of the number of dollars)

Originally Posted by you&me

To no one's surprise, this is the main reason my kids go to private school. The learning environment was pretty #### when I went to school and there's been zero progress made to address the shortcomings, which have only been exacerbated by further decades of neglectful budgets, lack of investment and a booming population. I wish this weren't the case. I wish public schools provided a reliable level of service and education that made me comfortable with sending my kids. My wallet sure as #### agrees. And I recognize that I'm beyond fortunate to be able to provide an alternative to my kids. But I also pay into the same system as everyone else. At the very least, I appreciate getting (nearly) the same back out of the system as everyone else (yeah, yeah, the childless pay in too - don't worry, you'll make it back from the taxes paid by my offspring).

At the end of the day, we don't have a $300mm, or a $461mm problem and that amount isn't going to make a dent in - let alone fix - public education in Alberta. It is a multi-billion dollar, multi (multi) year problem and worst of all, it's one we could afford to fix if the leadership (ewww, feels gross using that word to describe what the UCP does) of this province would actually, you know, do something about it.

You prove my point. The gap between where the public education system is and where it is supposed to be (one of the best education systems in the world) is massive. The conservatives are perpetually trying to drive more and more families into the private school system so that they can formalize a strategy where they have a "rich educated class" and a "poor dumb class" within our society.

The things holding back Alberta public education:
- Alberta funds the education system the least out of Canada
- Alberta pays the most to private schools out of anywhere in Canada
- Alberta is the only province to pay for Charter schools
- Alberta is one of the few provinces to continue to pay for Catholic schools

We do not need to fix just one or two of these things to get back on track. The UCP has made the problem so extreme that the solution likely needs to be a resolution of all of these issues that are diminishing the public school system.

When you think about the "Alberta Advantage" what do you think the description of our education system should be?

Flipping the above list on it's head, I would want to see this:
- Alberta funds the education system the most out of Canada (even more than Quebec!!!)
- Alberta's school boards are the best run in the country and their teachers are the best paid (teachers move to Alberta to get jobs)
- The Alberta curriculum is the most progressive and most advanced in the world, building the most productive and engaged citizens of the future
- Alberta's public school system is so robust and diverse that it has specialized learning tracks to accommodate all kids that do not fit into a regular classroom and that all kids are given the best support to succeed
- Alberta's public school system has innovative schools that create new teaching methods to maintain the bleeding edge of education and those learnings are all funneled back into the primary system to advance all kids

Again, I understand your desire to be protective of private schools because your kids are in them, but you need to acknowledge that having a multi-tiered education system is bull#### and having any money at all being diverted when the larger system is failing is poor financial management.