Alberta education minister wants to make charter schools permanent

Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides says charter schools will become a more established element of the province's education system.

In a year-end interview last week with CBC News, Nicolaides says he's considering whether charter schools, which are granted approval to operate for up to 5 or 15 years at a time, could be deemed permanent.

"This is an important moment when it comes to charter schools," Nicolaides said.

He added that the current law and regulations don't match how the schools operate. He plans to consult with the sector in the new year about potential changes.

"A lot of [the schools] are really operating in a world that's quite different from what that original vision articulated," Nicolaides said. "A lot of them have become almost permanent fixtures of our education system."

The Progressive Conservative government created publicly funded charter schools in 1994 as a way to spur innovation in the education system. With an initial limit of 15 charter organizations operating at once, the schools were tasked with partnering with post-secondary institutions and local school boards to share what they'd learned so successful approaches could be replicated throughout the public school system.

A 2009 provincial government discussion paper on charter schools said the innovation and broad replication of successes "has largely not been realized."

After they were elected in 2019, the United Conservative Party lifted the 15-cap limit on charter schools and made it easier to apply to create a charter school.

A Canadian schooling option unique to Alberta, charter schools must prove they will use an educational approach not offered by a local school board, or offer vocational training.

Applications to found charters grew after the rules changed. Alberta Education says there are now 22 charter authorities running 38 schools, most of which are in Edmonton and Calgary.

Enrolment in charter schools has grown nearly 30 per cent since 2019, with around 12,800 students attending them — and many thousands more on waiting lists.

Provincial regulations say a charter school's first operating agreement will be up to five years. The education minister can renew a charter for up to 15 years.

The demand for charter schools and government's ideological support for more schooling options has also prompted them to increase the funding dedicated to modernizing, expanding and constructing new charter school buildings.

A new $8.6-billion plan to build dozens of buildings for Alberta's ballooning school-age population includes a commitment to build three new charters and renovate two charter buildings each year for three years. It's part of a goal to add 12,500 charter school spaces in the next four years, doubling enrolment in the charter system.