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The provincial government released its budget for 2011/12 on February 24 and, as expected, Alberta’s schools will be adversely affected by inadequate increases and, in some jurisdictions, actual reductions in funding.
At first glance, the budget figures suggest that education did relatively well in what appears to be a middle-of-the-road budget—total spending on K–12 education was increased by 4.7 per cent, while inflation is expected to remain low and the student population will grow by about 1.1 per cent.
A closer analysis, however, reveals that school boards will be challenged to maintain programs, services and classroom conditions at current levels. Some boards serving rural communities will be particularly affected by changing grant structures.
The Base Instruction Funding grant rate will increase by 4.4 percent, allowing Premier Ed Stelmach to say that he is living up to his 2007 commitment to fund teacher salary increases, which are also pegged at 4.4 per cent. But cuts to other grants mean that total transfers to school boards will range between +1.7 per cent and -3.5 per cent compared with last year.
Funding for the Small Class Size Initiative will be affected for the second year in a row. Grades 4–6 classrooms will no longer be funded under the initiative, joining the Grades 7–12 classrooms that lost the funding last year. Remaining class size grants will focus on K–3 classes and high school CTS labs, where class size becomes a safety concern.
Per-pupil grants for the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement will be cut in half for 2011/12, which will likely result in a loss of teaching staff and a reduction in professional development opportunities. More on AISI funding cuts can be found on page 3.
Other cuts include the elimination of grants for enhanced ESL/Francisation, enrolment growth or decline, and intra-jurisdiction distance. Enhanced ESL/Francisation grants provided an added 35 per cent ESL funding for immigrant students who are functionally illiterate in their language of origin, have had little exposure to formal schooling and were exposed to traumatic events in their home country. Enrolment growth or decline funding was designed to provide stability for schools and jurisdictions that experience large population fluctuation from one year to the next, and the intra-jurisdiction distance grant helped boards whose schools are widely dispersed.
Two other grants will be phased out over two years (through a 50 per cent reduction next year and elimination effective September 1, 2012): Relative Cost of Purchasing, and Stabilization. The Relative Cost of Purchasing grant was designed to help school boards that are located in a geographic area where goods and services are more expensive. This grant is worth nearly $8 million to a school board like the Calgary Board of Education. Stabilization funding was implemented after 2003/04 to mitigate the effects of declining enrolment in light of a new funding formula.
The elimination of grants will affect school boards differently but will reduce the impact of base grant increases for all boards. School boards will be left with a difficult budget process as they attempt to minimize the impacts of these grant reductions on classroom conditions. In any case, this budget will result in a loss of teaching positions.
With this budget the government seems to be arguing that school boards are in a healthy financial situation and is buttressing its argument by distributing a graphic showing accumulated reserves and surpluses that total $577 million. Alberta teachers expect school boards to make use of their reserves to minimize the short-term impact of government funding reductions. While this is not a strategy that can be sustained over the long term, drawing down accumulated surpluses will be necessary to maintain current program and classroom conditions over the next school year.
Teachers looking for action on inclusion will not find a new funding model for special needs funding in the 2011 budget, but will see a 4.4 per cent increase to grants for coded students. A companion document released with the budget says government will “create a funding model to support the continuum of supports and services” for special needs students as part of its three-year 2011–14 business plan.
Transportation grants will also see a $2 million increase for 2010/11, but the increase will be targeted funding directed more toward rural school boards where schools are widely dispersed.
A relatively early release of the budget and funding manual for school jurisdictions means board budgets should be created and approved over the next few months.
