October 6 - So it Begins - The Alberta Teacher Strike

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Come on man, this has been proven to be incorrect on multiple occasions. How are you still throwing out these falsehoods?

This guy.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Come on man, this has been proven to be incorrect on multiple occasions. How are you still throwing out these falsehoods?

Oh, sorry, I must have confused my Charter schools and Private schools in that last post.

Show me the proof that Charter Schools get funded elsewhere in Canada. I am really curious to see it. I am sure you can find the proof easily for all to read.

[CFO]

Originally Posted by LanceUppercut

This is the student breakdown in the last 5 year for population by grade:
https://www.alberta.ca/student-population-statistics


Does anyone know of a similar break down for the teacher population?

Total immigration - whether provincial or out of country. How do you have grade 12 number in current year that high when 4-5 years ago not even close. That means it's a total flood into the province. In last 2-3 years.

[CFO]

Originally Posted by LanceUppercut

Does this include administrators etc?


Quick napkin math is the per capita students per FTE went up by 0.5 between 2022-2024. To bring it back to 2022 levels, an extra 900 teachers would have been hired.

Doesn't that mean 1000 per year curbs it and incremental 2000 lowers it?

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Oh, sorry, I must have confused my Charter schools and Private schools in that last post.

Show me the proof that Charter Schools get funded elsewhere in Canada. I am really curious to see it. I am sure you can find the proof easily for all to read.

I'm not going to show you public funding for charter schools elsewhere in Canada because only Alberta has charter schools. The closest thing, that I'm aware of, to charter schools in another province are the Quebec CEGEPs which are publicly funded.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Currently it is $461M. Calling that "insignificant" is a deceptive comment. $461M is a big pot of money that could be going toward funding the public sector to do things like... pay the teachers. The UCP budget shows an increase of $55M next year for private schools and then $188M over the next two years. Private school funding is booming in the UCP's plan.

Charter schools represents another $66M in annual funding, but that doesn't count the $123M that the UCP gifted to private and charter schools on top of their operating budget.

All of these issues come back to the same root cause: The UCP is defunding and dismantling the public education system to enable more and more private schools (including Charters). You cannot ignore a part of the problem when it is clearly a significant part of their strategy.

Private schools do not get funding elsewhere in Canada and they do not need public funding in Alberta either. This isn't an "us vs. them" problem as much as it is aligning to the norm and stopping with giving handouts to (rich) people who can afford private education when the public education system is breaking down.

For those of you who are lucky enough to have kids in Private/Charter schools, the point should be to build up a strong enough public school system that has enough capacity and support to address the needs of all kids.

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

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.

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.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by CFO

Total immigration - whether provincial or out of country. How do you have grade 12 number in current year that high when 4-5 years ago not even close. That means it's a total flood into the province. In last 2-3 years.

That big jump in the count from Grade 11 one year to Grade 12 the next must mean a lot of kids are going back to upgrade and doing another year of Grade 12. That would mean almost 1 in 3 doing Grade 12 again.

Another number I find interesting is the drop from ECS one year to Grade 1 the next. There must be a lot of kids who aren't ready for school doing two years of Kindergarten.

[LanceUppercut]

Originally Posted by getbak

That big jump in the count from Grade 11 one year to Grade 12 the next must mean a lot of kids are going back to upgrade and doing another year of Grade 12. That would mean almost 1 in 3 doing Grade 12 again.

Another number I find interesting is the drop from ECS one year to Grade 1 the next. There must be a lot of kids who aren't ready for school doing two years of Kindergarten.

Those are both quite interesting.


If you follow grade 5 -> grade 9 from 2021/2022 - > 2024/2025 you see a minor change in the first year , followed by 1500/2000/1500 additional students in each subsequent year. Grade 6 -> Grade 10 minor change in the first year again, 1300/1600/2600 additional students. Coincidentally, Alberta is calling campaign started in August 2022.

[Regorium]

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).

Would you still send your kids to private school if your fees were 50% higher?

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by CFO

Total immigration - whether provincial or out of country. How do you have grade 12 number in current year that high when 4-5 years ago not even close. That means it's a total flood into the province. In last 2-3 years.

Yes and you know who’s responsible for this? The UCP and its “Alberta is Calling” campaign. Our braindead provincial government lacks the foresight to build appropriate infrastructure for its own initiative.

[GullFoss]

Ive come to the opinion that pay is reasonable, but working conditions aren't. Id support teachers if their strike was solely about raising per capita funding levels without increasing teacher pay. But it's become clear the strike is about both pay and working conditions.

I hope both sides are able to come to a fair and reasonable solution. While the province loses public support and teachers lose pay, the biggest losers are the children.

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by woob

Does CBE track class sizes? CCSB? I thought I had read someone posting that Edmonton school board captures this info.

I know this question has been answered already, but to give a bit more detail, yes. Every year, the principal has to reconcile funding with staffing, and funding is based on student enrollment projections determined by head office. Every spring, Principals have to determine how many staff to hire for the following school year based on staff to student ratio, as well as account for extra funding for specialized programs, such as EAL’s, international students, GATE, etc.

Based on that information, it would be pretty easy for an administrator to tell you classroom sizes. But since reporting in this particular point was ended by the UCP, we can only rely on anecdotes.

[WinnipegFan]

Originally Posted by Point Blank

I know this question has been answered already, but to give a bit more detail, yes. Every year, the principal has to reconcile funding with staffing, and funding is based on student enrollment projections determined by head office. Every spring, Principals have to determine how many staff to hire for the following school year based on staff to student ratio, as well as account for extra funding for specialized programs, such as EAL’s, international students, GATE, etc.

Based on that information, it would be pretty easy for an administrator to tell you classroom sizes. But since reporting in this particular point was ended by the UCP, we can only rely on anecdotes.

This is mostly accurate. The catch is that funding within the CBE was centralized years ago. This is part of the problem. When this took place class size became very challenging to directly connect to funding or to track.

This is because we used to get funding according to the credits we earned with Alberta Ed. Then they took all of this and centralized it with the CBE. This is when they really pooched class size as they began counting all of these people as "student facing" that work downtown and never see a kid. This removed the limit that was placed by A. Ed. on administrative costs. In fact, they got called out by the NDP on hiding the cost of their new ivory tower rental downtown. The rental alone blew over the amount they are supposed to spend on administration. So they called all these downtown people principals and counted them as student facing funding. So, the kdis they would be in front of according to the funding wehre spread out over the actual studnet facing roles at schools. Uping the class sizes jsut to keep a bunch of people working downtown and avoid being embarassed by the government.

So this affects the CBE's tracking of class size. Then they use specialized programs with less than 10 kids in them (usually medically required small sizes, extremely high needs) to balance out their huge high school classes. Combing this with other trickery and you end up with misrepresented nubers all over the place.

Class size is huge, been 40 or higher for years in high school.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

Ive come to the opinion that pay is reasonable, but working conditions aren't. Id support teachers if their strike was solely about raising per capita funding levels without increasing teacher pay. But it's become clear the strike is about both pay and working conditions.

I hope both sides are able to come to a fair and reasonable solution. While the province loses public support and teachers lose pay, the biggest losers are the children.

I bet a deal could get done if the gov’t offered national average wages, class sizes, and per student funding.

That should be very easy for a province like Alberta to do and it’s ridiculous that teachers have to strike to try and get a deal like that.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

Ive come to the opinion that pay is reasonable, but working conditions aren't. Id support teachers if their strike was solely about raising per capita funding levels without increasing teacher pay. But it's become clear the strike is about both pay and working conditions.

I hope both sides are able to come to a fair and reasonable solution. While the province loses public support and teachers lose pay, the biggest losers are the children.

These two two statements don't work together.

Since 2019, average teacher weekly earnings rose by 14.1 per cent, compared to a 20.8 per cent increase in the consumer price index, the most common measure of rising costs for basic needs, such as food and shelter.

TEBA’s proposed 12 per cent raise over four years

https://thegauntlet.ca/2025/10/06/wh...ing-on-strike/


So 3% raise a year. The average inflation for the past 4 years is about 3%. So by your statement of freezing wages, you are actually saying you think teachers are overpaid, as they would receive a 3% pay cut each year due to inflation.


If you believe the pay of teachers is correct now, you should support the 12% wage increase. And if you believe working conditions need improving, then you support the teachers strike.

[The Fisher Account]

12% would be reasonable if they were getting regular inflationary wages - but they haven't. A huge piece of the wage conversation is trying to catch up from a decade of lost purchasing power.

https://medium.com/@abteacher/a-pay-...e-750dc9c9641f

[Fuzz]

Which is also true, but I was just addressing GullFloss saying he thinks they are currently paid adequately, which means he doesn't share in the "catch up" part. But even then he would have to support the wage increase, not stagnation based on his statements.

[Major Major]

Guys, he's come to a conclusion, ok? He's done listening. All we have to do now is sit back and wait for the fallout.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by WinnipegFan

This is mostly accurate. The catch is that funding within the CBE was centralized years ago. This is part of the problem. When this took place class size became very challenging to directly connect to funding or to track.

This is because we used to get funding according to the credits we earned with Alberta Ed. Then they took all of this and centralized it with the CBE. This is when they really pooched class size as they began counting all of these people as "student facing" that work downtown and never see a kid. This removed the limit that was placed by A. Ed. on administrative costs. In fact, they got called out by the NDP on hiding the cost of their new ivory tower rental downtown. The rental alone blew over the amount they are supposed to spend on administration. So they called all these downtown people principals and counted them as student facing funding. So, the kdis they would be in front of according to the funding wehre spread out over the actual studnet facing roles at schools. Uping the class sizes jsut to keep a bunch of people working downtown and avoid being embarassed by the government.

So this affects the CBE's tracking of class size. Then they use specialized programs with less than 10 kids in them (usually medically required small sizes, extremely high needs) to balance out their huge high school classes. Combing this with other trickery and you end up with misrepresented nubers all over the place.

Class size is huge, been 40 or higher for years in high school.

Yeah. This is why it makes me crazy when people always say we should get rid of charters and catholic schools to save admin costs. The CBE has area principals up the ying-yang, they're easily the worst managed of the 3 groups, so we should shut down the other ones and put them in charge? Even little things like sub scheduling and sub list policies cssd is better run.

**I want to be clear here I think CBE central admin is a disaster. There are many, many great teachers who care in CBE, which is all that holds that place together, imo.

[IliketoPuck]

The Alberta government participated in TALIS 2024, which is a global survey of the education / teaching profession conducted by the OECD. For those looking to quantify where Alberta stands from a empirical standpoint, this is a good source.

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications...368aa6-en.html

Some very interesting metrics to consider:

- only 13% of teachers agree that their views are valued by policy makers, a decrease of 25% since 2018.
- 50% agree that their salaries are satisfactory.
- total working hours per week is 46.9 (OECD average is 41); 27.6 hours on teaching, 6.9 on lesson preparation, 4.8 on marking, and 2.4 on administrative.

One key metric that we've discussed here, is teacher burnout and stress. In terms of jurisdictions in the survey, we rank dead last (i.e. our teachers are the most stressed in the World).

Overall, there are puts and takes in the survey. But if we are a society that values education and want a world class education system for our future generations, we need to be aiming far higher than we are currently.