When ‘’Denial Smith’’has time to focus on education she actually has managed to do something useful, pledging $8.6B for 200 000 new pupil  places over 7 years and building 50 000 places in the next 3 years. This is good news, notwithstanding the fact that Alberta has seen a population boom, as one of the last places in Canada where ordinary people might be able to buy a home. However the Alberta Teachers’ Association ATA, the teachers’ union, has pointed out, what is the point of new spaces without a commitment to more teachers, as many boards are still laying off due to low provincial grants for staffing. 

 

The real problem in AB education is in the simultaneous privatization of education and the attempts to reorient curriculum along particularly anti 2SLGBTQ+ lines and anti environmental lines.

 

To get the political lay of the land, you need to understand a couple relationships. Danielle Smith is a former member, and even leader, of Wild Rose Party, a party actually to the right of the former PC party. The two parties merged under former premier Jason Kenney. Smith is clearly a far right ideologue. Next her party, the merged United Conservative Party- UCP, is to the right of the old PC Party. Not to be outdone, there is another key player to the right, even of the UCP. Take Back Alberta -TBA, is a grassroots pressure group that seems at once to be a shill for both social conservatives and Big Oil. 

 

The relationship between TBA and UCP is roughly the same as the relationship between MAGA and the GOP. They control half the seats on the UCP provincial executive. TBA not only wants to control the provincial government through control of the UCP, they are making a play for the school boards as well. They seem to want to impose their Christo-Neo Fascist views throughout Alberta and were even making a play to assist John Rustad’s Conservative Party in BC. 

 

To quote leader David Parker, ‘’the schools have been captured by a ‘Green Guard’ and a ‘Rainbow Guard’ , a less than subtle comparison to Mao’s Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution in China’’. Parker wants to fire these folks in a Trump style house cleaning. He may have a problem with unionized teachers, but the senior staff of school boards may be more vulnerable. 

 

BTW Smith and Parker were formerly very close political allies, but had something of a blowup over, who really runs the UCP Parker or Smith? It became worse, when Parker attacked Poilievre regarding all the time he spends with former girlfriend Jenni Byrne Conservative campaign manager, instead of his wife, Anaida. Inquiring minds want to know,  

 

TBA is also associated with two other groups through convention speaking opportunities, The Alberta Parents’ Union APU and Parents for Choice in Education, PCE. Both groups prefer choice in education which broadly means Charter Schools but they hold the door open for vouchers systems and other forms of privatization as well. There seems to be both religious motives and a penchant for standardized testing. They believe that they should not be forced to follow the provincial curriculum when ‘’alternative curricula’’ are available, but still receive tax money. 

 

Premier Smith clearly supports the privatization of public education in an evolutionary way, since an overnight or total privatization is unlikely to be well received by the Alberta public. Who will call to man the barricades over another couple of Charter schools each year? Today, 66% of Alberta students still attend public schools not counting catholic or Francophone schools, which are fully funded. In a recent round of funding, Smith gave a 13.5% increase to the private options but only a 4.4% increase to public schools. 

 

Smith claims to want ‘’ideological balance’’ in curricula which you can imagine means things like equal time for climate change denial, Lord knows what ‘’balance’’ means on 2SLGBTQ+ issues or other human rights issues. Charter schools must use the provincial curriculum but ‘’can add to it’’. Creationism anyone? Charters cannot charge for tuition, however they can charge for uniforms, or extra curricular activities. 

 

The 38 Charters to date, can use, ‘’criteria’’ when they consider a student for enrolment. Since most readers will know the concept of Charter Academies emerged from the famous Brown vs Board of education Supreme Court school desegregation case in the USA, and were designed as ‘’white academies’’ it doesn't take a leap of faith to understand that modern segregation along class, culture, ethnicity and race are at least one of the primary motivations behind privatization by charter, home schooling or vouchers, ‘’our kind of people’’ wink wink. 

 

To wrap it up, conservative Alberta is not just one province, going its own strange way. A better way to see Alberta is as Canada’s version of the Old South an incubator of reactionary ideas in all areas but for our purposes in K12 education. It's the province that pushes the boundaries of how much privatization the public will abide before they turn on you politically. 

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Alberta is in transition. The two big cities, Calgary and Edmonton, sometimes Lethbridge, are gradually shifting to the left, which may be provoking rural Alberta to react so strongly in the opposite direction. As this dialectic works its way through, this ‘’classroom struggle’’ will continue to play itself out in the legislature, the school boards and right down to the individual classroom. Keep your eye on Alberta.