Education - the Alberta Advantage?

Speaking of education, the Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has recently announced that he will be returning over $1 billion of education taxes to municipalities. Prior to the Klein government changes in education funding starting in 1994, local schoolboards acting in conjunction with the muncipalities set a portion of civic property taxes to be used to fund schools. The schoolboard operating budgets came directly out of this levy. Under the Klein government, the province collected this money from the municipalities and then returned to the schoolboards in the form of per pupil grants, with additional monies granted for capital and special projects. Critics of this plan have long argued that under the new system the large urban boards of Calgary and Edmonton have seen their funding levels decrease, inhibiting their ability to meet the specialized needs of at-risk, special needs, and ESL students who tend to migrate to the urban boards. Furthermore, this has put negotiations between local schoolboards and locals of the teachers' union in an awkward place since the schoolboards do not have control over their income, but the union locals cannot negotiate with the province who actually holds the purse strings. Is it any wonder then that labour relations have reached some of their highest tensions in the last thirty years?

At any rate, the education is still underfunded. Urban schools are in various stages of disrepair and the provincial teachers' pension plan has an unfunded liability over the $6 billion mark. Somehow though, Premier Stelmach feels comfortable refunding money to the muncipalities to be used for municipal projects like road construction and repair.