So, my daughters are embarking on a the exciting path of revolution. It makes me so proud to see them have at the Provincial Government and the School Board.
The Alberta Government in its wisdom, and on our behalf, have decided that it isn't necessary to pay for the current levels of teaching and support staff. The current budget for Education is insufficient to maintain the status quo.
Perhaps this is left-over from previous inadequate funding; poorly educated administrators and politicians at the departmental level. At least when it comes to math.
According to the recent budget release (http://education.alberta.ca/department/budget.aspx), there is a suggestion that education costs are spiralling out of control. "Over 10 years, funding to the education system has increased by 63 per cent while student enrolment has increased by three per cent." They even have graphs to prove it and on the surface it seems correct. Reality is, however, that if you look at the money spent in terms of the cost of inflation, it looks like about 4.5% per year (approximately). This number seems really close to the AWEI. In other words: this is what we would expect.
Or consider this: If we know that the cost for staffing will go up about 4.4% next year, the enrolment is estimated to go up 1.1%, and the forecast cost for operating support in 2010-2011 is 5,452,711,000 then the budget for 2011-2011 should be at least that much times 1.044 * 1.011 or 5,749,556,000.
It isn't. In fact, it is about 39,109,000 less than that (http://www.finance.alberta.ca/publications/budget/budget2011/education.pdf, the page numbered 48). This is equivalent to about 375 teachers.
Overall, the expenditure on Education is only going up about 2.8% over last year. If the cost of delivering education is going up, we need to pay that bill.
I'm just saying.
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