Public education advocates call on Alberta to axe funds to private schools

[GGG]

Originally Posted by DionTheDman

But are all above average students being taken away and put into the private system? What about special needs kids that get taken out of the public stream and put into specialized schools? They exist, too. So while I could buy the argument that some lower cost/higher performing kids will enter the private stream, so will some higher cost/lower performing kids.

In 2021/2022, the total school population in Alberta was 744,809. Of those students, 39,194 were in private schooling (not including Charter, or other specialized schools for simplicity). So you've removed 5.26% of the student population and put them into private schools. Now, I have no clue what proportion of private schooling is for special needs kids versus religious versus other, but that's 5.26% of the overall student population. I'm no expert, but that doesn't seem like a massive exodus of the best and brightest the province has to offer.

By the same token then the idea of this saving Albertans tax dollars is a red herring as well. I agree this is at the margins

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by DionTheDman

I think the disconnect is that I was discussing a reduced funding scenario where you are proposing a no-funding scenario for private school children.

I think it'd be more both Mr. Public and Mr. Private have paid entry (taxes) to get into the event and are given a vouchers for a meal (entitlement to public education). Mr. Private elects to use some of his vouchers and pay extra to get a nicer meal.Mr. Public can get a meal as he pleases.

What you're proposing is that since Mr. Private is willing to pay extra, he shouldn't get vouchers at all despite paying entry to get in in the first place. Why not? His entry cost just as much as Mr. Public.

This (admittedly silly) example doesn't even take into account that Mr. Private donates some of his vouchers so that Mr. Public can get more/better food.

Your example completely ignores why we have a publicly funded school system to begin with. Private schools which many couldn’t afford to enrol their children in existed long before public schools did, the point of starting a public school system was to give those children the opportunity of receiving a good education not to subsidize the private system and call it fair.

Reallocating funds away from the lower and middle classes in the name of fairness is a common argument politicians use to try and put more money in the pockets of their wealthy donors. The old universal child tax benefit was a good example of this.

[powderjunkie]

I'm definitely pro-public, but I recognize that there are valid arguments for private.

The far greater issue for effective/efficient delivery of education is unnecessary redundancy with the Catholic Board. How much more money could go to teachers and classrooms instead of duplication of administration and infrastructure?

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

I'm definitely pro-public, but I recognize that there are valid arguments for private.

The far greater issue for effective/efficient delivery of education is unnecessary redundancy with the Catholic Board. How much more money could go to teachers and classrooms instead of duplication of administration and infrastructure?

Query to elicit discussion:
did we get significant reduction of admin/organization infrastructure when we went from individual hospital boards to Health regions? ( and from the Health regions to Albert Health Services superboard transition?)


FYI: Technically 4 school boards cover Calgary students

[you&me]

Good question.

The Board, Admin, Support, Maintenance and Operations expenses for the Calgary Catholic board are approx. $138m per year(page 38-39)... Surely a large portion of that could be saved through redundancies.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by you&me

Good question.

The Board, Admin, Support, Maintenance and Operations expenses for the Calgary Catholic board are approx. $138m per year(page 38-39)... Surely a large portion of that could be saved through redundancies.

Support, maintenance and operational expenses to run the schools would largely remain unaffected as most schools in both systems are already at capacity so there likely would not be any schools closing. How big the saving would be would depend on how much of the budget is allocated solely to the board and admin staff(less than 8.8% according to the report). Considering their overall expenses were $418M I think the savings would be rather minimal considering a merger probably wouldn’t result in a reduction of all those positions.

[JohnnyB]

A good public system is invaluable to the health of a state, but I believe very much that people should have the option to step outside that system. My memories of the mainstream public education system are that it was soul destroying. Since leaving Calgary I have also seen many sides of private education that aren't consistent with some of the stereotypes presented here, such as private programs for the students who are not excelling in public education as the public system isn’t a fit for them and doesn't accommodate them. Equality is, imo, not what a good education system should offer. More important is the system's capacity to cater to the individual needs and best interests of different families, but that's also not really the objective of public education. At heart there is a fundamental tension between a system that is designed to serve the interests of the state and a system that's designed to serve the interests of individual children and families.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Support, maintenance and operational expenses to run the schools would largely remain unaffected as most schools in both systems are already at capacity so there likely would not be any schools closing. How big the saving would be would depend on how much of the budget is allocated solely to the board and admin staff(less than 8.8% according to the report). Considering their overall expenses were $418M I think the savings would be rather minimal considering a merger probably wouldn’t result in a reduction of all those positions.

Immediate impacts wouldn't necessarily be huge, but there's no time like the present to stop building both public & catholic schools side by side - each with a larger radius than if they were distributed better (currently more transportation costs, fewer kids walking, etc.). Instead of three sets of 300 student catholic+400 public schools you build four schools for 525.

Another goal could be to use the existing redundancies in terms of actual buildings to offer different educational philosophies, different calendars, or even different daily start/end times. This already happens to a degree as a lot of redundant schools are converted to charter schools.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I don’t blame parents, no. But on a society level, the streaming of high income and elite education is not good for society. It’s the primary reason why there’s less social mobility in the U.S. and UK than there is in Canada and Germany. Lower correlation between affluence and access to education = more egalitarian society = less social strife.

The US education system stratification is about private v. public, it's about rich v. poor, generally. There are public schools in the US that are exceptional, and there are ones that aren't. Most of it has to do with the socioeconomic status of the people attending.

Western is still the best high school in the city

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

The US education system stratification is about private v. public, it's about rich v. poor, generally. There are public schools in the US that are exceptional, and there are ones that aren't. Most of it has to do with the socioeconomic status of the people attending.

Western is still the best high school in the city

Sure. But the upshot is that in the U.S. affluent families go to much better schools than working class families. That alignment is much stronger than it is in Canada.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

The US education system stratification is about private v. public, it's about rich v. poor, generally. There are public schools in the US that are exceptional, and there are ones that aren't. Most of it has to do with the socioeconomic status of the people attending.

Western is still the best high school in the city

True, but it is just a different type of economic exclusion. Here education is provincial, so funding is roughly the same throughout the province. There it's municipal in many (most?) states, so rich areas have better schools because they pay more taxes for them. I've heard friends in the US say they have to live in the right school district (at a significant housing-cost premium).

Also - is Western still the best? I went there myself (more years ago than I care to admit) and imo it was better than the privates at the time. But there were lots of people in my Western IB graduating class (including the valedictorian iirc) who went to junior high at private school. Plenty of overlap between the types of kids in top public programs and top private programs.