Students face tuition hikes, funding freezes
Province wants school boards to find ‘own-source revenue,’ share services
Students across the province — from grade school to university — are facing a tough budget with potential tuition hikes, funding cuts and freezes this year and the two years after.
After promising to fund growth for K-12 education, the UCP government’s Budget 2019 will actually freeze overall funding at $8.2 billion, equal to the former NDP government’s spending last year and continuing at that same level for the next three years.
While instructional services will see a 2.2 per cent increase in funding, rising from $6.3 billion to $6.4 billion by 2022-23, other areas will see cuts, including transportation funding, reduced from $751 million to $700 million by 2022-23. Program support services are to be cut by $2 million over the next three years.
Budget documents propose the 2.2 per cent hike to instructional services as the government’s commitment to pay for enrolment growth.
But union leaders say the budget is asking teachers to do more with less at a time when the school population will grow by up to 15,000 students.
“The government is playing a shell game in order to trick us into thinking enrolment growth is being funded but, at the end of the day, school boards have less funding per student, which means larger classes, fewer supports for students and programming cuts,” said Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.
School boards will receive about $200 less per student than they received in the last school year, he added, which is equivalent to a two per cent funding cut.
Schilling added that as a result, classroom complexity will continue to be a significant challenge.
While funding appears flat for 2019-20, the UCP budget says reallocation of three grants for classroom funding will address enrolment growth, including Class Size Funding, Classroom Improvement and School Fee Reduction Grants.
A one-time transition grant is also being created this year, allowing the province to direct additional funding to school boards to ensure each student entering a school is fully funded, although it’s not clear how much per-capita funding will increase.
Barb Silva, spokeswoman for the Support Our Students parent advocacy group, says maintaining the same $8.2 billion in annual spending over several years as student populations increase essentially reduces per student funding.
“It means every student in Alberta will have to be educated for less money. This budget does not adequately account for more students in the system, increasing expenses related to teacher pay, transportation, school maintenance and other resources and supports,” Silva said.
“This government’s obsession with debt reduction will happen at the expense of Alberta’s children, their education, their well-being and, ultimately, the economic future of this province.
“The inability to concentrate and augment funding for public education is an assault on Alberta children, 94 per cent of whom are educated through the public system.”
According to the Budget 2019 document, “education’s current funding model is not sustainable,” because operational funding that’s driven by enrolment and demographic changes leads to “increased competition” among school boards.
Instead, the province wants to see local boards, including the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District, consider sharing services such as busing.
School boards are also being encouraged to find their “own-source revenue,” possibly from accumulated surpluses and reserves from prior years.
But the CBE, like many other boards, has already tapped into dwindling reserves to support ongoing enrolment growth and inflation.
This spring, public school trustees gave the nod to a $1.4-billion budget in June, including a $40-million funding gap and up to $22 million in cuts to classrooms.
Parents also fear a huge hike in school fees, particularly for transportation after the UCP’S removal of the NDP’S Bill 1 — An Act to Reduce School Fees. CBE students could see annual transportation fees ranging from $360 for yellow buses to as high as $750 a year for Calgary Transit youth bus passes over the 10-month school year.
Capital funding for K-12 schools will invest up to $1.8 billion into new school construction and modernization. Much of that money ($1.36 billion) is dedicated to previously announced projects. New school projects from 2019 to 2024 will receive only $328 million.
Details as to which projects will get the go-ahead are expected to be released later.
Meanwhile, post-secondary students will see the removal of the former NDP government’s tuition freeze, allowing institutions to increase fees seven per cent each year over the next three years, up to a maximum of 21 per cent by the 2022-23 school year.
Budget 2019 forecasts an overall cut to advanced education funding from $5.3 billion last year to a targeted $4.7 billion for 2022-23. Interest rates on student loans are also expected to rise, although it’s not clear exactly how much.
The Council of Alberta University Students (CAUS) said the UCP government has broken its promise to support post-secondary education.
“The government committed to support ‘post-secondary education as critical to both Alberta’s future economy and to a vibrant Alberta,’” said Sadiya Nazir, CAUS chair. “Cuts to funding for these institutions that impact the quality of instruction or student supports outside of the classroom should be a last resort.”
It means every student in Alberta will have to be educated for less money.