My Speeches

School Class Sizes and Utilizations

Posted on Feb 22, 2010

The Speaker: The hon. Member for Battle River-Wainwright,
followed by the hon. Member for Calgary-Varsity.

School Class Sizes and Utilization

Mr. Griffiths: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. After doing a little bit of
research, it came to my attention that from 2004 until 2009 there was
an increase of 3,300 teachers in Alberta’s school system, but there
was only an increase of 12,000 students. That represents a 10.5 per
cent increase in the number of teachers, but the student population
only went up by 1.4 per cent. To the Minister of Education: what
would drive such a huge increase in the teacher population relative
to a small growth in the student population?

The Speaker: The hon. minister.

Mr. Hancock: Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a very clear
answer to that, the class size initiative. We’ve hired almost 3,000
teachers in order to meet the class size policy that was put in place
after the ACOL report, Alberta’s Commission on Learning. Almost
all of those teachers that you’re talking about are in response to
meeting the class size initiative.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Mr. Griffiths: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Cities like Las Vegas have
realized that an exceptional growth in their student population
warranted more schools, but they also realized that they did not have
the budget to build or maintain those needed schools. To better
utilize taxpayers’ dollars, they’ve opted to educate students in shifts
and run year-round schooling to better utilize the space they have.
Our school buildings, new or old, sit empty for a third of the year
and half the afternoon and evening. To the minister: have you
considered adopting some of those well-developed methods to better
utilize the school space that we currently have so that Education
dollars go to educating students rather than to buildings and
maintenance?

The Speaker: The hon. minister.

Mr. Hancock: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In fact, there are a number
of situations around the province where school boards have put in
place programs either to do year-round schooling or to extend the
school day, in some cases even considering whether double-shifting
might be possible, to use the school on two different school days
within one date, so to speak. Of course, there are always the issues
of change management, which have to be dealt with. We’ve become
used to the concept that we go to school for certain months of the
year and for certain times of the day, but that really, clearly, has to
change.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Mr. Griffiths: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We spend a lot of money
building, running, and maintaining school buildings. I think the
Minister has picked up from my previous question that I have
concerns about how we focus our expectations and performance
requirements usually on the building rather than on outcomes. To
the Minister of Education: do you have plans in place to help with
that change management that will refocus our attention to the fact
that our province’s future rests on well-educated children, not on
whether a community or neighbourhood has an attractive building
to stand in?

The Speaker: The hon. minister.

Mr. Hancock: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I’m firmly of the
opinion that public buildings should be attractive and should be the
hub of the community and should be a place that we can be proud of.
The hon. member is absolutely right. As we go through the
Inspiring Education process, talking about what kind of education
we need to be successful in the future, we also have to look at our
physical platforms and say: are the schools that we have performing
the function that we need? There would have to be a lot of review
on what an education facility looks like while recognizing that we
have those facilities; they’re important to communities in terms of
libraries, gymnasiums, and the other things that are essential.