Public school board balks at forced name change

In defiance of a ministerial order to change their institution’s legal name, public school officials are asking to instead maintain the Calgary Board of Education’s long-held and familiar moniker. But the province has already hit back, saying it will reject the request because it goes against a provincewide initiative to standardize school districts across Alberta. Over the summer, local superintendents received an official letter from the Deputy Minister of Education, explaining that as a result of the Education Act, all school boards and districts must officially become school divisions.

“This change allows all entities to have consistent, maximum flexibility to determine their electoral

boundaries and representation,” said deputy minister Curtis Clarke.

“Before this consistency was introduced, different jurisdictions had different rights depending on whether they were districts, divisions or regional divisions. As divisions, now all jurisdictions can operate under a level playing field.”

But the reasoning still has some education leaders scratching their heads, while others are concerned the change will take the word “public” out of many school districts across the province, creating a system that won’t differentiate between public and private.

The CBE had its name changed to “Calgary School Division” as of Sept. 1, in compliance with the Education Act.

But CBE administrators raised concerns about the high cost of changing their name on myriad legal documents, including purchase order templates, vendor contracts, land titles and copyright registrations.

As a result, CBE trustees voted Tuesday to send a letter to Education Minister Adriana Lagrange asking that they revert to their original, long-held name for the sake of saving time and money.

But Colin Aitchison, press secretary for the Office of the Minister of Education, said the public school board’s former legal name was actually Calgary School District No. 19, not CBE.

And more importantly, he added, they can continue to maintain Calgary Board of Education as their brand, in letterhead, on their website and on school buildings, meaning the cost of the change would be negligible.

“The Board of Trustees of the Calgary School Division is clearly unable to grasp how these changes will affect them. If the division wants to fight to retain their old legal name, Calgary School District No. 19, they should make that clear. Moving forward, the Calgary School Division is welcome to continue to brand themselves as the Calgary Board of Education.”

In response to whether the minister will approve the CBE’S request to maintain their old legal name, Aitchison said: “No. The minister will not approve their request, as this would result in school divisions not having standardized names, which was the point of the change.”

While the official request has not yet been sent, CBE chair Marilyn Dennis said that if the minister rejects it, staff will be forced to go ahead with time-consuming and expensive work.

“The impacts would be significant if we weren’t able to revert back to Calgary Board of Education,” Dennis said.

“There are a number of contracts, a number of vendors that we work with, titles on our building and any land we own. We’d have to revisit all of that to change the name.

“And this is about using our resources the best we can. It would be significant if we were not able to be successful.”

Barb Silva, spokeswoman for the Support Our Students advocacy group, said the removal of the word “board” has huge impacts for the CBE because it dilutes the board’s value as a democratically elected body.

“As a public education advocacy organization, we expect our elected trustees to defend public education at every opportunity. This is, in fact, what they have been elected to do.

“Moreover, at a time when public education is increasingly under attack by Minister Adriana Lagrange, we call on all trustees to take immediate action on behalf of public education.”

Silva suggested the CBE comply with the ministerial order but then document all associated administrative costs for implementation and highlight that those funds could have been used in the classroom.

Silva also wants school districts to add the word public to all communications in solidarity.

“The CBE should protest this ministerial order by actively incorporating the word public in all other correspondence. The time is now to show our commitment to public education, and we expect our public school board trustees to lead in this endeavour.”