Dale Wallace

On October 2, 2009 it was reported in SECN that charter schools want to have improved access to educational funding. What charter schools are demanding is money to build their own school buildings rather than rent space from the Calgary Board of education. Jay Prichard, Superintendent for the Foundations for the Future Charter Academy, argues that his school and other charter schools should no longer be considered an experiment and receive capital funding like the public school board to build new schools.

It is very true the experiment of charter schools is over, and it can be definitely determined that charter schools in Alberta should be disbanded and the pupils and the funding return back to the general public education system.

Fourteen years ago, when the charter school legislation was enacted, the public school system was very different in Calgary. There were very few alternative programs in public schools, and people were demanding alternative programs. The public school board of the time was slow to develop alternative programs, so the government of the day enacted the legislation.

The legislation read, and still reads, that charter schools are “public schools that provide a basic education in a different or enhanced way to improve student learning.  The expectation for the educational services offered by charter schools is that they will be different from what is locally available.”

However, the problem with charter schools in Calgary is that they provide very little different from what is offered in the public school system, and they show little or no evidence that they improve or enhance the learning of their students.

Let’s examine the programs that the charter schools offer. First the Alamedina Language Charter Schools offers strictly English as a Second language program. The problem is that there are English as a Second Language programs offered at schools all over the city.

Another charter school is the Calgary Arts Academy and this school is not different as there are arts orientated schools in four different public schools for students grade 4 to grade 12.

The Calgary Girls’ School in another charter school, but again the Calgary Public Board has an all-girls school located at the Alice Jamison Campus in north east Calgary.

Westmount Charter School is a program for gifted kids, and gifted programs are offered in not one but eleven different Calgary Public Schools.

A traditional learning program is offered in the Foundations for the Future Academy, but, yet again, the traditional learning approach is offered in thirteen various public schools across Calgary.

The Calgary Science School that offers a program (learning with an emphasis in the sciences) is not a unique program as two campuses in Calgary offer similar programs.

What many charter schools offer to parents and students is an “enhanced learning environment,” which means that they attempt to keep their class sizes smaller. In fact what charter schools often do is manipulate their budgets plus attempt to piggyback resources from the general Public School Board to reduce their costs so they can reduce their class sizes. If they had to incur the costs that any other public school had to their class sizes would be the same.

Plus, presently they are complaining that they must spend 10%-15% of their budgets on renting school facilities. However, if they were to increase their class size to that in other public schools they would have more dollars to spend on facility rental.

Yet perhaps the most damming argument that can be made against charter schools is that they are not doing much to improve education. A quick search of any of the schools’ websites doesn’t show how they are, or are even working, to improve education in Alberta.

In fact if a researcher were to use even a poor measuring stick like the Fraser Institutes School rankings, the only charter school to approach enhancing student education is Westmount Charter School which placed 25th in the elementary school rankings in 2008. Yet an argument can be made that they should be placing near the top of the rankings as they only teach gifted and talented kids.

Sadly, when hard questions are asked about charter schools like: why are students only exposed mostly to academic learning and hands-on or learning in the trades are ignored? Or how can young students learn to compete in society when their extra curricular sports and athletic programs are missing or at best slim. Or if a student was at a charter school would his or her education open his or her mind to the fullest possibilities in the world or simply narrow them to what the parents thought best for the students?

In Alberta we have a strong and good public education system and charter schools simply duplicate needed resources. They are simply a second public school system. During the 1990’s a progressive move by the government was to get rid of extra and unnecessary school boards that used precious education dollars. What we have now in Alberta with charter schools is a second public school system that is a poor carbon copy of the public education system.

It’s time Alberta saved and better used their public education dollars and disband charter schools.

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