Alberta government committee has $400M over 3 years to resolve class size and complexity problems

Some money for promised new teachers was already in the provincial budget.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is seen with Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides on her left, and Red Deer Public School Board chair Nicole Buchanan on her right. Mike Symington/CBC

Janet French, CBC News Edmonton Nov 7, 2025

The Alberta government plans to use $400 million over the next three years — plus spending already earmarked in its existing budget documents — to pay for more teachers, educational assistants and better access to diagnostic testing, the education minister says.

As Premier Danielle Smith announced members of her new class size and complexity cabinet committee on Friday, co-chair and Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said that committee doesn’t have the power to allocate more than that $400 million to improving the school conditions that led to an unprecedented provincewide teachers’ strike last month.

“I wouldn’t discount it,” Nicolaides said of the promised funding increase. “I think it is a significant investment and I’m confident it will help move the needle in bringing class sizes down and in addressing some of the significant complexity challenges that we have.”

He added that the committee could ask the province’s treasury board for more funding, if warranted.

This year’s budget for operating all Alberta schools is about $9.9 billion. Should the government opt to spend $133 million more a year, it would be about a 1.3 per cent increase in school operating funds.

“It can look small, it can look like one or two per cent,” Nicolaides said. “But in real dollar value, it’s quite significant. Four-hundred-million dollars gets us an incredible amount of new teachers.”

Three weeks after 51,000 public, Catholic and francophone teachers hit the picket lines, cancelling classes across Alberta, the provincial government passed the Back to School Act, also called Bill 2.

It ordered teachers back to work, imposed a four-year contract that 90 per cent of members had already voted down, and invoked the notwithstanding clause to insulate the government against legal challenges.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) is challenging the legislation in court, arguing it is unconstitutional.

While ordering teachers back to work, Smith promised to pay for school divisions to hire 3,000 net new teachers and 1,500 new educational assistants.

That promise of additional staffing was part of a September offer teachers voted down, saying that wasn’t enough staff to address the magnitude of the challenges they are facing.

Nicolaides clarified on Friday that some of the funding for those new staff is already accounted for in the existing provincial budget’s three-year-plan.

More students in classrooms with more unmet needs

At issue in the contract dispute was teacher compensation, and what many teachers and parents say are deteriorating conditions in classrooms. Years of population growth, a demographic bulge of children and teens, along with an education funding formula that does not keep pace with enrolment growth has left school boards trimming spending and pleading for new school buildings.

The ATA says that has led to teachers grappling with larger classrooms full of students with varied needs — such as learning disabilities, those learning English, or mental health challenges — and few additional personnel to help those children succeed.

Government data shows the pace of school enrolment growth has exceeded the pace of new teacher hiring since the 2020-21 budget year.

Some analyses have found Alberta’s per-student funding is among the lowest of the Canadian provinces.

To address the challenges, the ATA wanted student-teacher ratios reflected in their contract. Teachers’ contracts in most Canadian provinces include ratios or caps limiting class sizes or the number of students with complex needs assigned to each teacher.

During the contract dispute, Alberta government officials said class-size caps or staffing ratios were off the table, and that the ATA was being too narrow-minded about potential solutions.

The new class size and complexity cabinet committee consists of Smith, Nicolaides, three other cabinet ministers, three school board superintendents, one current and one former school trustee, and a senior leader of the ATA.

Alberta teachers, students and their families have reported increasingly crowded classrooms where students who have extra needs sometimes don’t get the help they need to succeed in schools. CBC

Smith said at a Friday news conference in Calgary that the cabinet committee will hear from educators, school board trustees, parents and people with expertise on meeting the needs of students who face challenges.

“This is not just another working group or panel,” Smith said. “This is a committee ready to make decisions and implement change immediately and with urgency.”

The government has already told school boards to hand over data on class sizes and the numbers of students with additional needs by Nov. 24, and this information will also inform the committee’s decisions about where to spend the additional money, Smith said.

Both Smith and Nicolaides also blamed the conditions in schools on the rapid growth that Alberta schools experienced after the province’s population boomed in 2023.

However, some urban and suburban school divisions have been warning for nearly a decade that a demographic bulge of students aging through the system risked filling up schools by now unless many buildings were added and renovated.

ATA says committee must make investments

Nicolaides is also striking a teacher advisory council for at least two years to get “an on-the-ground perspective directly from the front lines of our education system,” he said at the news conference.

Calgary Board of Education superintendent Joanne Pitman, who has been appointed to the cabinet committee, said she’s glad to see teachers included in the groups.

“I’ll take any opportunity, quite frankly, that’s provided,” she said. “And whether or not that’s something that could have been done earlier is, right now, not our point.”

ATA president Jason Schilling said Friday the striking teachers and public pressure has forced the government to take school conditions seriously. He said he’s glad there’s an ATA representative involved to hold the government to account.

“Without a real commitment to funding, the recommendations that come out of this and the solutions that come forward, they will just be empty words, and we’ll call them on that,” Schilling said.

NDP education critic Amanda Chapman said it’s inaccurate for the government to say enrolment pressures only appeared within the last two years.

“If teachers did not believe that 3,000 teachers and 1,500 education assistants over three years would be sufficient to address that complexity, it’s not clear to me why the government feels like that’s enough,” she said in an interview.

Chapman said more committees and advisory groups aren’t necessary as she believes teachers already understand the challenges and what they need to improve students’ environments.

Janet French Provincial affairs reporter

Janet French covers the Alberta Legislature for CBC Edmonton. She previously spent 15 years working at newspapers, including the Edmonton Journal and Saskatoon StarPhoenix. You can reach her at janet.french@cbc.ca

With files from Ted Henley

Source CBC News Edmonton