The province's move this week to solve the Morinville secular school debate has left the St. Albert Protestant board members feeling they got the short end of the stick.
The move announced Wednesday reverses the designation of both St. Albert school boards, with the current public Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools becoming the separate school board and the current separate board, St. Albert Protestant, becoming the public board.
Both boards will also receive a name change under the proposed bill, which is aimed to allow the Sturgeon School division to become the public school board in Morinville and operate a secular school to accommodate a demand from parents in the community.
Unlike in the rest of the province, because of a historical anomaly St. Albert's public school has been the Catholic board and the Protestant board has been the separate system.
The Protestant board is now worried that losing their separate status will cost them their rights.
At the board's meeting Wednesday night, hours after the announcement was made, Protestant board chair Joan Trettler said the board wanted to be part of the solution, but didn't want to give up the rights traditionally given to separate boards.
"I think the frustration has been the inability for us to move forward with the rights we have enjoyed as a separate school board," she said. "We had felt that our rights could be protected and the minister doesn't agree."
Trustee Joe Demko said that the minister pushed to have the solution for Morinville parents done so quickly that it narrowed the options the board had to solve it.
"I believe that the short timelines imposed on coming up with some kind of a solution really seems to be restricting the ability to examine other ways of examining these issues."
According to the current school act separate school boards, including the Protestant board, are created when a minority religious group, either Catholic or Protestant, comes together and petitions the government to create them.
The act lays out a process that involves a census count of the minority religious group and requires a vote before the establishment of the board. Since their creation comes through a different process they have traditionally been viewed as having more direct rights.
Those rights include taxation powers, though with the current school funding coming on a per pupil basis, boards no longer use that power.
Under the current legislation, a separate board also the right to exist and the right to elect trustees. Trettler said becoming a public board means in future the government could decide to merge the St. Albert board with another school board or decide to appoint school trustees.
Former education minister Dave King agrees that the St. Albert Protestant board has lost out in this arrangement.
"St. Albert Protestant is definitely the big loser because they are a separate school board at the present time and separate school boards have certain rights that are guaranteed by the constitution. Public boards have no such rights."
St. Albert is the only part of the province where the Catholic board is the public board and King argues the government is trying to correct that situation at the expense of the Protestant board.
He said because the Protestant board doesn't operate in Morinville there was no need for them to be part of this issue.
"They were not at all part of the Morinville problem. They didn't have any interest in being part of this solution. There is no need for them to part of the solution," he argued. "The minister is using Morinville as a shell game so all of us will pay attention to the wrong shell, while the pea is under a different shell."
King argues under the current School Act the minister is empowered to give geographic areas to different school boards, which would have allowed him to hand over jurisdiction for Morinville to the Sturgeon board, without changing anything in St. Albert.
This option would have meant there would be no Catholic schools in Morinville, but King argues Catholics in the community could have come together and formed a separate board.
Trettler said the board is still reviewing the new legislation and considering what options they might have, but they are going to remain focused on their main priority.
"We don't want anything that will take away the district's energy of educating students.
Rights academic
Education minister Thomas Lukaszuk admits the separate board is losing rights, but said those rights are designed for minority faith groups and the Protestant board no longer qualifies.
"In order for me to give them that right I would then have to assume that in the city of St. Albert there are two minorities."
Lukaszuk admits the board is losing the right to tax, but points out that is a right that no separate school board has ever used, because the province funds education one student at a time.
He said in terms of their rights to exist and elect trustees he has no plans to regionalize the board or change how trustees are elected, but he said any government can change that with any school board.
"It really is an academic argument because any government of the day cannot bind any other government of the future."
Lukaszuk said with the exception of the issue of minority rights the rest of the plan was created from the three local boards. He said King has a lot of suggestions for alternate solutions, but notes he did not implement them in his time as minister.
"I wish he had instituted those ideas when he was minister of education so I wouldn't have had these problems."
