John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, www.parentchoice.ca.Last week’s provincial budget includes $90 million over three years for independent school capital. That’s real money, and it’s welcome. But it’s a fraction of what independent schools need, and it arrives surrounded by a political hesitancy that deserves examination.Conventional wisdom in Alberta education policy is that the government shouldn’t invest heavily in independent school buildings because those buildings are owned by independent societies, not the province. It’s a reasonable-sounding concern. However, the same logic applies to “public” schools.When a public school board decides it has a “surplus” school, it often sells that building commercially. The building was constructed with public money, served a public purpose for decades, and was then liquidated for the board’s financial benefit. The province has the technical authority to recover those properties and redirect them to other schools, including independent ones scrambling for space. It seems reluctant to do so. Whatever the reason, the result is that publicly funded buildings exit the educational mission entirely, while independent schools serving the same taxpaying families are told there isn’t enough capital for bricks and mortar.This is not a minor irritation. The Hunt and Venkatachalam report published last month by the Aristotle Foundation established that independent schools and the home education students they largely supervise save Alberta taxpayers approximately $236 million a year in operating costs alone. That finding is consistent with a 2019 estimate of roughly $272 million. Nearly 46,000 students are enrolled under independent school authorities. If those students were pushed into the public system, Alberta would need at least 54 additional schools at a capital cost of $1.76 billion. Yet the sector that generates those savings gets $90 million over three years for buildings, while public boards get to sell their old schools to condo developers..The ownership concern, meanwhile, doesn’t survive scrutiny. Independent school societies are non-profit organizations serving the public. The governance structure differs from a school board, but the function is identical: educating children whose parents pay taxes. At what point did “public” education stop meaning “education of the public” and start meaning “education controlled by a government board”? That semantic drift is doing enormous work in this debate, and almost nobody notices.But rather than simply complain, let me propose two solutions. The first is embarrassingly simple.Any provincial capital contribution to an independent school building could sit as a lien on the property. If the society dissolves or repurposes the building, the province recovers its investment. This is how governments handle infrastructure grants in virtually every other sector, and would adjust the government’s legitimate concern about long-term asset control. However, the fact that nobody has proposed it for independent schools suggests the ownership concern is more pretext than principle.The second solution is more ambitious, and it builds on work already done. Cardus proposed a forgivable loan fund for independent school capital in 2024. Geoff Russ, writing for the University of Toronto’s Ontario 360, went further and called for independent schools to access government-backed preferential loans, noting that public, Catholic, and Francophone schools already can. Both were right that loans, not grants, are the key. But neither pointed to the obvious model..Catholic dioceses across North America operate revolving loan funds for parish and school construction. One diocesan finance officer called it “standard operating procedure for dioceses.” The structure is the same everywhere: a central fund lends capital at reasonable rates, the diocese retains an interest in the property, and parishes repay over time. It works, it’s self-sustaining, and it has been tested for decades.Alberta should establish a similar revolving loan fund for charter and independent school construction. The government lends capital at low interest. The province holds an asset interest throughout the life of the loan. Schools repay from their operating revenues, tuition, and private fundraising. If a public board wanted to use the fund rather than waiting in the provincial capital queue, it could do so against its own operating funds. The point is not to take anything from the public system. The point is to give charter and independent schools access to capital on reasonable terms, something they often lack.The political beauty of this approach is that it asks for less than full equity. Independent schools aren’t demanding free buildings. They’re asking for the chance to borrow. Any opposition to that necessarily becomes an argument for why charter and independent schools should be locked out of capital entirely.The $90 million in today’s budget is a concession of principle: independent schools deserve capital support. The argument now is about the mechanism. A revolving loan fund would settle that argument for good.John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, www.parentchoice.ca.
