Albertans may soon have a say on how their public tax dollars are being spent on education.
Calgary high school teacher Alicia Taylor is the driving force behind a citizen-initiative petition aimed at ending public funding for independent (private) schools in our province. Taylor’s proposal, approved by Elections Alberta on October 7, asks: “Should the Government of Alberta end its current practice of allocating public funds to accredited independent (private) schools?”
“I think there is a disparity in education right now,” said Taylor. “The private schools are a lot fancier, a lot nicer, they’re making donations, they have so much extra money, and I don’t believe they need the public funds to support that.”
Taylor says she started the petition because she felt it was important to bring attention to the fact that public dollars are being funnelled toward education that is out of reach for many Albertans.
This year’s provincial budget allocated approximately $461 million to independent schools. That amounts to about 5 per cent of the province’s entire K–12 education budget.
“I don’t believe the average Alberta citizens who send their kids to public schools really would support the notion of putting their tax dollars toward these elite private schools. I think if they had the choice, they would vote in favour of taking those public funds away from the private schools,” said Taylor. While she understands that the redirection of the private school funding would be at the government’s discretion, her hope is that those extra dollars would be used to support public schools.
Taylor’s petition officially kicked off on October 14, amid the provincewide teachers’ strike, which raised issues such as classroom complexity, overcrowding and insufficient resources. She believes the timing may have helped spotlight the need for extra funding for public schools.
“We’re just three weeks in and we have over 1,500 people that have signed up to be canvassers, so a large part of our work over the last few weeks has been getting those volunteers organized,” said Taylor. “Now we have the work of getting to all the people that want to sign the petition.”
Taylor, who also serves as a district representative on the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s Provincial Executive Council, has until February 11, 2026 to collect just over 177,000 signatures for the question to qualify for a referendum. The petition already has 13,940 signatures.
Minister comments on potential impact
With just under 50,000 students currently enrolled in accredited independent schools, Demetrios Nicolaides, Alberta’s Minister of Education and Childcare, warned that tens of thousands of students could be forced to immediately seek alternative programming if funding were withdrawn from independent schools.
“A significant number of our independent operators operate specifically for students with specialized learning needs and so that will be extremely challenging from a logistical perspective to try and implement and execute,” said Nicolaides at a November 3 news conference. “But, of course, as the petition moves on, we will be modelling that, just to ensure we are prepared for whatever kind of outcome.”
Taylor says Nicolaides’s concern wouldn’t be an issue if the public school system were properly funded, arguing that parents wouldn’t need to look elsewhere to ensure their children’s learning needs were being met.
“My belief is that we should already be supporting those students as part of a well-funded public school system. They shouldn’t need to be seeking out these opportunities at private schools,” she said.
