Private school funding petition needs 177K signatures

Posted on October 23, 2025 by admin

By Zoe Mason
Southern Alberta Newspapers

A Calgary high school teacher launched a citizen initiative earlier this month that would ask if the province should end its policy of allocating public funds to accredited independent schools.

The approval of the petition by Alberta’s chief electoral officer coincides with the largest labour disruption in Alberta’s history, as teachers across the province conclude the first weeks of their strike.

If the petition gathers 177,000 signatures over a 120-day petition period, the question will go to referendum. This process was expedited by a legislative change in May, which significantly lowered the threshold of support required for citizen initiatives to advance to referendum.

The timing of the petition’s approval with the start of the teacher strike was a coincidence, says Alicia Taylor, the teacher who initiated the petition.

“It was a happy accident, honestly, that there’s so much focus right now on education, and now there’s this citizen initiative around this issue,” said Taylor in an interview with Southern Alberta Newspapers.

Taylor is also a member of the Alberta Teacher’s Association. While the citizen initiative is an independent effort, she says her involvement with the association was part of the motivation to launch it.

“Through my work with the association, hearing stories from a lot of my colleagues in Calgary, the funding, especially in our larger centres, has not kept up with enrolment growth. We’re facing a lot of challenges because of that – large classroom sizes, lots of classroom complexity. Those issues were top of mind when I was deciding to launch this initiative.”

Taylor says she crafted the wording of the proposal to apply exclusively to private schools, excluding charter schools.

Early critics of the petition have highlighted the role that private schools play in providing supports to children with complex care needs, especially at the early childhood level.

“My response to criticisms like that is that I believe that all citizen’s needs should be served in the public school in their community. They shouldn’t need to seek out those other opportunities for their children. A well-funded public system should be meeting the needs of those kids in the first place,” said Taylor.

Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides criticized the petition in an interview with The Canadian Press earlier this month.

“We’re talking about impacting tens of thousands of students and creating a situation where they would have to immediately seek alternative programming,” he said. “That would create massive pressure on our public system, which, of course, is already under immense pressure.”

Alberta’s $10.4-billion education budget includes $461 million in funding for independent schools.

“$461 million would make a difference. It’s not going to fix the hole that we’re in but it would make a difference. It’s a positive step forward,” said ATA president Jason Schilling at a press conference kicking off the strike on Oct. 6.

“The association’s policy is not against private schools,” he added. “The fact that public dollars are going to private schools, that is where our members have taken exception.”

In a statement to Southern Alberta Newspapers on Oct. 10, Schilling emphasized that the petition is not an ATA initiative.

“Alberta spends the least per student in all of Canada and yet funds private schools at 70 per cent of what students in public schools receive. This is the highest funding for private schools in the country, with many provinces not spending any public money on private schools,” he said.

According to Elections Alberta procedure, Taylor had to select a chief financial officer before the petition period could begin. She has completed that step, and is expecting the petition period to open soon.