Lethbridge School Division. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Budget cuts for schools expected

Most southern Alberta school divisions receiving budget cuts

Feb 12, 2020 | 2:18 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) is calling out the provincial government’s expected reduction in funding to school divisions across the province.

They obtained documents under a Freedom of Information request that shows, overall, school boards are slated to receive $126-million less funding for the 2019-2020 school year compared to 2018-2019.

ATA President Jason Schilling calls it a contradiction from what Premier Jason Kenney and his administration had previously stated.

“The premier and other government officials have painstakingly attempted to argue that operational funding has been maintained, but they pointed to the government budget document that uses a different fiscal year-end. These documents, from the government itself, show the extent of the cuts. By forcing us to FOIP this data, I’m convinced they did not want the public to know the extent of education cuts.”

LNN has seen the documents that were released by ATA and we will include the page numbers for the local school divisions. You can access the full document here.

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Of southern Alberta’s school districts, Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Separate School Division (Pg. 31) is set to receive the largest cut. Total funding is expected to fall by $1,506,000 (-2.85%). K-12 enrolment is projected to grow by 0.6%.

The Horizon School Division (Pg. 32) will reportedly lose $1,277,000 (-3.25%). K-12 enrolment is projected to fall by 1.8%.

The Lethbridge School Division (Pg. 34) will get $427,000 less (-0.39%) than in the previous year. K-12 enrolment is projected to grow by 3.6%.

The Livingstone Range School Division (Pg. 36) will lose $10,000 (-0.02%) in funding. K-12 enrolment is projected to grow by 2.4%.

The Palliser School Division (Pg. 45) is the only one in southern Alberta LNN could find that will receive more money. They will get $263,000 more (+0.31%). K-12 enrolment is projected to grow by 2.9%.

No information was available for the Westwind School Division.

“Our schools and teachers are being continually asked to do more with less,” says Schilling. “These documents clearly show how much more and how much less. Across the province, in clear undeniable numbers, we are seeing 13,000 more students and a $136 million cut in funding.”

Provincially, the ATA reports that the cups amount to a four per cent cut in per-pupil funding, effective September 2019. Enrolment is expected to grow by 13,000 students.

The Government of Alberta is expected to release its full budget on February 27.