Effort to end public funding for Catholic schools in Alberta
December 30, 2010
David King, Alberta’s former education minister, has launched a campaign to abolish the province’s system of separate publicly-funded Catholic schools. King supports the merger of public schools and Catholic schools because of declining enrollments in inner-city and rural areas.
Under King's proposal, existing Catholic schools would lose their public funding, and most would take on a new character as ordinary public schools. They would theoretically have the option as continuing on as Catholic schools, but would be forced to find their own independent sources of funding.
Alberta’s current education minister opposes the proposal.
“We’ll see what comes from Mr. King’s petition, but I see no reason to change a system that is working very well,” says Dave Hancock. “We are working at transforming the system to do even better in the future, but that change will not eliminate choice for Albertans to choose the kind of education that works well for their students.”
17.9% of Alberta’s 3.7 million residents are Catholic.
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