With both sides in Alberta’s teacher strike throwing recriminations back and forth, one wonders why no one is talking about the most obvious solution for saving money? I’m talking about amalgamating the public and (public) Catholic systems — if not in whole, at least in part.Haven’t we all watched the Catholic school bus follow down the street minutes after the public bus to pick up different kids at the same bus stop in rural Alberta? If some school systems can’t even coordinate their inefficient transportation systems at the local levels, then what sort of inefficiencies exist for the finance and other administration and management systems? With non-teaching costs in our school systems approaching 20% to 25% of total expenses, surely we could save 5% of these costs on our $7 to $8 billion school budgets, meaning permanent increases to teaching budgets of $350 to $400 million.If the systems really were different, in curriculum or approach — like they used to be — there’d be an argument against it. But as things stand, why are we paying for dual levels of administration? It’s not as though they’re teaching, reading, writing, math, chemistry, biology, physics, or physical education differently. In 1997, Newfoundland decided they could not afford and did not need two school systems, held a referendum, then did a constitutional amendment. Since Confederation, Quebec has also abolished denominational rights. Today, such rights only exist in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario.The degree of amalgamation might depend on the size of a school district (population and geographic area), differences in class size between districts, rural versus urban areas, etc. Perhaps only certain services like transportation should be amalgamated in some areas, and in others, a complete merger makes sense.Perhaps a Provincial Referendum and a constitutional amendment are in order here. For the sake of the students and the taxpayer’s wallet.Stuart TaylorGrand Prairie
