The leaders of Alberta’s political parties will be sent a report from Edmonton Public Schools that suggests as many as 932 jobs could be lost if education funding is cut after next spring’s provincial election. Trustees have characterized the report as “grim” and “bleak.”
But United Conservative leader Jason Kenney is rejecting the report and calls it a politically-motivated attack by a trustee who supports the NDP.
At a public board meeting Tuesday, school trustees with Edmonton Public Schools unanimously passed a motion asking the leaders clarify their views about education funding within six weeks.
Job loss numbers were calculated using hypothetical scenarios. They include funding cuts of three per cent and five per cent over four years, respectively resulting in staff cuts of 841 and 932 full-time jobs.
The report was prepared at the request of trustee Michael Janz, who noted the district is one of the city’s biggest employers.
The report is clearly aimed at Kenney, whose party is leading in the polls over the governing NDP.
Kenney said he rejected the premise of the school board report. No one was proposing a five per cent funding cut and he suggested Janz was misallocating school board resources to attack his party.
“That report was clearly solicited by an NDP member of the Edmonton school board who thinks it’s a good use of the scarce resources of the school board to basically produce a document to attack the NDP’s opposition,” Kenney said. “I wish they were using the money instead on educating kids.”
Alberta is heading toward a debt of $96 billion by 2023. Kenney said he wants to balance the budget but hasn’t specified how he wants to do it as the party is still working on its campaign platform.
At a news conference in Edmonton Tuesday afternoon, Kenney said savings could likely be found within the provincial government, which he called the most inefficient in Canada, without hurting front-line services.