Smith says ‘every single school’ in Alberta has capacity issues while hinting at new plan

Alberta has a very serious problem of schools that are full or overflowing, the premier has declared, while teasing that a new plan to address the issue is coming next week.

“Every single school is facing these capacity issues,” Danielle Smith told reporters Wednesday in Lloydminster.

“It’s acute and it’s across the system…I spoke with one large school board yesterday and they comfortably operate at 85 per cent utilization and they are now at 96 per cent utilization.”

That’s quite an admission, considering Smith’s UCP government is in charge of funding school construction in Alberta. 

She pointed to a population increase of 200,000 people last year as a major cause.

“We know that in every community we were quite taken by surprise by the number of people who moved to Alberta in 2023,” Smith said.

But local school officials have been reporting enrollment growth and pleading for construction dollars for years. 

Five new schools were opened in Alberta this fall, but Edmonton Public claims they need 50 more in the next ten years. And that’s just one division, in one city. 

The NDP says the government failed Albertans.

“We’ve got a very clear three-year pattern of growth that we have seen, so it does feel disingenuous to say we couldn’t see this coming. Because a lot of us saw this coming,” said MLA Amanda Chapman, the NDP’s shadow minister for education.

“What we need to see is a huge investment and that looks like money for capital, for building news schools in our growing communities, and we also need to see some investments on the operational side as well. We need more teachers.”

Edmonton Public Schools is reporting 38 schools at 100 per cent capacity or above and another 81 approaching that mark. 

The Calgary Board of Education says it had 68 schools above 100 per cent full last year. New numbers are expected later this fall, but officials there expect their system-wide utilization rate to be above 100 per cent by next year.

In Edmonton Catholic, a spokesperson said Thursday that half their schools, 46 of 92, are full or over capacity.

Outside of Lillian Osborne High School in southwest Edmonton, some parents were concerned with the situation. The school averaged 31 students in each class last year.

“I think that’s in Canada, in general. We need more schools. The classrooms are overcrowded,” said parent Jamie Robinson, who said school officials warned him his child might have to go elsewhere for lack of space, but that didn’t happen.

“I’m concerned. She doesn’t like being in a crowded place. I’m concerned, I’m worried,” said parent Soyoung Min, whose daughter said she has 32 kids in her classes and the hallways are overcrowded.

“Finite budgets mean there’s only so much money to go around. One government’s priorities might not be the same as another government’s,” said parent James Bauer. His son is in a special needs program so Bauer said his class size is not an issue.

The premier says her government is working on fixing its capacity problems, but she wouldn’t explain what the long-term fix will be when pressed by reporters. 

“We announced over the summer that we are going to be investing in more modulars as a stop-gap measure but there’s more that we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks,” the premier said.

Smith is set to give a dinner-hour TV address on Sept. 17. She said Albertans will learn more then about how she plans to deal with overflowing schools.

This year’s provincial budget has construction funding for 19 schools, five in Edmonton and two in Calgary.