All three St. Albert-area school boards will soon operate with new boundaries and new powers with a new piece of legislation designed to solve the long-running issue of secular education in Morinville.
The St. Albert and Sturgeon Valley School District's establishment act was introduced into the legislature Wednesday afternoon and creates new boundaries, while also flipping school divisions. The current Greater St. Albert Catholic school division will lose its public status and become a separate school division named the Greater St. Albert Roman Catholic Separate School Division. This change will allow the Sturgeon School Division to become the public board in Morinville and Legal, while the St. Albert Protestant school division will be renamed the St. Albert Public School District and become the public school board for St. Albert.
Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk said the new arrangement was created through shared sacrifice from all sides.
"Everybody in this arrangement is giving up something, but they are giving up something for the betterment of the whole system," he said.
Lukaszuk said the arrangement will give parents a democratic voice at the table along with providing them with school choice.
"Choice and voice are principles which apply across the province," he said. "Today we are ensuring that parents have both choice and voice."
A lingering question is where those newly empowered parents will send their children. In Morinville, the current Catholic board runs all four local schools and for the last year the Sturgeon board has operated a secular school, first from their board office and most recently from two modular classrooms at Georges P. Vanier School.
Lukaszuk said he has asked the boards to work together to find a solution that could include switching one of the town's existing schools from the Catholic board to the Sturgeon division, but he said that hasn't yet been decided.
Sturgeon school board chair Terry Jewell said that, in its submission to the minister, his board stressed that it would need the resources required to provide education if it was going to be asked to provide public education.
"What we talked about was that if we were going to offer meaningful non-denominational education in Morinville, we had to have a facility," he said.
Jewell and Catholic board chair Lauri Ann Turnbull agree the issue of a new building will be difficult to work out.
Turnbull said in the discussions going ahead her board will try to make sure current students aren't forced into cramped conditions.
"We are going to advocate very strongly to ensure that we have adequate infrastructure for our students," she said. "I think as it stands right now our schools are full."
Current St. Albert Protestant school board chair, Joan Trettler said she was in part disappointed by the minister's bill, because it will force the now separate board to become the public board. Her concern is that separate boards have legislative protections in ways that public boards don't.
Trettler said the board was prepared to become a public board, but only if current rights were enshrined and protected.
"What we were prepared to do was change our designation providing our rights as a separate board were grandfathered, and the minister has been unable to do that, or says he can't," she said.
Trettler said a separate board has an enshrined right of existence that can't be changed, but a public board can be merged or regionalized.
She's concerned that a public board will be at risk of being absorbed by another larger public board, such as Edmonton's, at some point in the future.
"We're talking about the right to exist," she said. "We don't want to be regionalized. We want to remain within the city of St. Albert."
Parents partially pleased
Parents who initially championed the cause said they are happy, but won't be completely satisfied until the bill is passed and until a school is identified in the community.
Jillian Schafer Percy, who has two children in the existing Morinville Public Elementary School, said she believes the legislation is good news, but not knowing where her children will go to school next year is worrisome.
"We are halfway, I think," she said.
She said children need to be able to focus on education and having a school designated would resolve the issue.
"This needs to be established and it needs to be formalized," she said.
Donna Hunter, who began the challenge against the school board in November 2010, said she shares those concerns. Hunter left the community last year when it originally looked like there might not be a solution.
She said given Lukaszuk gave direction to boards to resolve the issue just two months ago, she now wonders why the province took so long to resolve it.
"Where was this in 2010? What was with all the song and dance?"
Before any of the changes can take effect, the bill has to be passed in the legislature, which Lukaszuk said he hoped would proceed quickly. Lukaszuk told an Edmonton radio show the Morinville bill and the Education Act, which are both before the legislature should be passed before the legislature dissolves and the province goes to the polls.
"I am hoping that both acts are really meeting the desire of educators and parents, so I don't anticipate there will be much debate or filibustering."
