My friend Chelsea Matisz is a returning contributor to CBC Radio One Calgary’s Unconventional Panel. She spoke on the show this morning about how the strike is affecting her and her family.
When the [government] stopped tracking class sizes in 2019 it made it impossible for accountability and now we have this problem. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we’ve gotten to this point. There should have been schools being built and teachers being hired and so the fact that we are at this point where the teachers are on strike is a failure of the government to be able to see that they needed to collect data and account for what’s happening. To me it’s clear, you know we have a minister that said, ‘classroom sizes don’t affect academic outcomes. There is no evidence for this.’ There is evidence for this.
She went on to discuss the $460 million that the government has invested in private schools. Private schools by definition are only available to a limit portion of the population. If one doesn’t meet the criteria or can’t afford their high tuitions, they can’t go and yet public funds are propping up these ventures. It’s not right.