Juno News - Alberta charter schools are booming

00:00:00.960 Rachel Emanuel brings the news each day on Alberta Roundup. She has her say.

00:00:10.720 Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host, Rachel Emanuel.

00:00:14.560 Today, I am joined by a new guest and a very impressive woman, if I do say so myself. 0.98

00:00:19.760 I'm joined by Kaylin Ford. She is the founder of three Alberta Classic Academy schools.

00:00:25.120 Two locations are in Calgary and one of them is in Edmonton.

00:00:28.240 And she's joining us today to talk about what is unfolding in Alberta's public schools.

00:00:32.320 Kaylin, thanks so much for being here today.

00:00:34.160 Well, thanks for inviting me, Rachel.

00:00:35.840 So the reason I wanted to have this conversation with Kaylin this week is because I saw an interesting

00:00:40.000 tweet from the Alberta's Teacher Association this week, which appears to have had their annual

00:00:44.080 general meeting. They tweeted out this week. Delegates have passed a resolution that states

00:00:48.720 be resolved that teachers are able to demonstrate support for safe spaces for all students and

00:00:54.080 teachers through the utilization and display of pride materials in their classrooms.

00:00:58.880 So Kaylin, you obviously fall under a different registration. You are a classical academy school.

00:01:03.760 Could you just start by explaining for our audience how that differs from Alberta public schools?

00:01:07.920 Sure. So the Alberta classical academy schools are public charter schools.

00:01:13.440 Alberta is the only province in Canada that allows charter schools.

00:01:16.800 And basically, we're very similar to public school, to other public schools,

00:01:20.720 except that we have our own autonomous boards of directors. So we're not beholden to the large

00:01:25.520 district school boards or metro boards. We have distinctive philosophies, pedagogical approaches.

00:01:32.480 Some charter schools serve particular student populations. So for example, a girls only education,

00:01:38.000 indigenous focused education. Those are some of the other existing charter schools in Alberta.

00:01:42.320 And our teachers are not unionized. But beyond those differences, we still follow all of the

00:01:47.520 regular sort of statutory and regulatory requirements that apply to other public charter schools.

00:01:51.760 Sorry, to other public schools. And our schools are tuition free for all the children who attend.

00:01:58.880 So when we saw this tweet, you know, they're specifically saying we're going to focus on

00:02:01.680 putting pride materials in the classroom. That's very important in the public school system right now,

00:02:06.240 sort of pushing this agenda and this ideology down children's throat. Is this something that you

00:02:11.520 would mirror in charter schools? Well, all charter schools are different, right? Each one is governed

00:02:17.760 by their own board, and they have a distinctive mandate. In classical education, I think we take

00:02:25.040 the general approach that we try to leave the outside world on the outside. And we want our schools

00:02:30.880 to be a respite from ideological, political contestations that are going on outside. So our students

00:02:38.720 study classic texts, things that have endured through centuries or millennia. We try to cultivate

00:02:43.680 an environment that is very orderly, very calm. Our hallways have classical art and architecture

00:02:49.760 displayed there. But, you know, we think Chesterton had a great line that you don't want people to

00:02:56.880 suffer the degrading servitude of being children of their own time. And the way we do that is by trying

00:03:01.440 to expose them to things that are eternally good and true and beautiful.

00:03:04.480 So when you say, you know, we really want to sort of shield our kids from what's going

00:03:09.280 on in the world outside, obviously the pride movement is one of those things that's going

00:03:12.400 on in the world outside. And that's really sort of taken over in schools. But you're saying that

00:03:16.720 might be a conversation that's happening right now in politics, but we are going to teach our students

00:03:21.920 things that have really withstood the test of time. That's right. And the same applies to,

00:03:27.360 you know, for example, international conflicts or other sort of social issues or contestations.

00:03:33.040 I think in general, many of those things are divisive. They produce anxiety in children

00:03:38.480 needlessly. In the case of pride materials, for example, we believe that parents are the primary 0.91

00:03:44.080 educators of their children and that parents should have a really important role in dictating if and

00:03:49.440 how and when their children learn about human sexuality. So we're not going to try to usurp that

00:03:56.080 role from parents.

00:03:56.960 So we talk about sex education. I mean, I grew up in Ontario. This is something that

00:04:01.760 they've started introducing to basically kindergarten students. It's really quite depraved. Do you guys

00:04:06.960 just avoid sex education entirely or do you wait till high school? How does that work in specifically

00:04:12.480 your classical academies?

00:04:14.000 I love this question, partly because we're currently developing our approach to sex education,

00:04:22.640 to human sexuality and health and wellness. So for one, this is an area where legally parents

00:04:28.160 in Alberta have the ability to opt their children out of classes that deal primarily with human

00:04:32.960 sexuality. So that informs our approach as well. Everything that we do, we try to be as transparent

00:04:38.480 as possible with our parents about what's happening in the classroom, what kind of questions their

00:04:43.200 children are asking, what sort of philosophical lens we would apply to answer those. But we do,

00:04:49.200 I mean, we do teach about human sexuality. It's an important part of being human.

00:04:54.160 You know, so we teach accurate, age appropriate information about biological facts,

00:05:00.880 human anatomy, physiology, you know, reproductive systems. So we teach the Alberta programs of study,

00:05:10.800 but I think that we have a distinctive lens that we apply to that. So, for example, we recently had

00:05:16.320 a talk with all our teachers about how do you apply an Aristotelian virtue ethics lens to the study of

00:05:21.440 human sexuality and help provide students with a more comprehensive ethical framework for making good

00:05:28.320 decisions in that domain. So when we were talking a little bit before about how your schools focus on

00:05:34.400 really lessons that have wistled the test of time, I was just reminded of a funny meme that I'm sure

00:05:38.080 lots of my audience has seen circulating online. A young person, they're on their first day at the job,

00:05:42.880 a new job, and they're trying to figure out what to do. And they're just thinking, oh, what was I taught

00:05:46.400 in school? And the thing that pops into their mind is a pride flag. So I'm wondering, you know, with these

00:05:51.120 modern public institutions that focus so much on pride, for example, and BLM and all these types of 0.97

00:05:58.160 things, how is this really preparing students for the real world when, you know, sometimes life's

00:06:03.200 just hard and you still got to go out and you got to earn a living and you just have to move forward?

00:06:06.560 Do you feel like public schools are doing an adequate job of preparing young people?

00:06:12.560 So, I mean, I think the obvious question is being surrounded by flags and political symbols in the

00:06:19.600 classroom doesn't seem to have any particular utility to me. And I think the underlying premise there

00:06:28.160 and this is reflected in the Alberta Teachers Association resolution is that somehow this makes

00:06:34.160 children safe. And I'm very curious, and I've tried asking people now, but I haven't received any

00:06:40.240 coherent responses. What evidence do we have that children are safe when they see

00:06:48.560 flags, pride materials, etc. in the classroom? By what mechanism does this make them safe?

00:06:53.280 I don't think that we have any evidence that supports this suggestion that students' mental

00:06:59.440 health is improved the more rainbow flags they see. And maybe the opposite, maybe there's some,

00:07:05.360 I think some circumstantial evidence that might suggest maybe the opposite, that a rise in anxiety and

00:07:10.000 depressive disorders in children has coincided with a growing ubiquity of these kinds of political

00:07:17.440 displays in classrooms. Not saying that that's the causal relationship, it's just interesting to note.

00:07:24.000 But I think there's another idea at work here, which is that children need to be sort of constantly

00:07:31.280 made to feel safe and affirmed. And I think it's priming them to view themselves as very emotionally

00:07:36.560 fragile. So when the implication is that you're not safe, if you don't see symbols constantly affirming

00:07:42.400 a particular aspect of your identity, I don't think that that's actually doing anyone any favors,

00:07:48.080 let alone the people for whom that is not their identity. So, for example, I wonder how safe and

00:07:54.800 included conservative or religious students feel in a classroom where they're constantly

00:08:01.440 exposed to pride materials, right? So, sorry, that was a long way of answering that question. I'm not

00:08:09.040 sure I answered it, but I think there's some interesting threads that could be pulled on there.

00:08:13.200 Well, I think you raise a really interesting point, something I've reflected on. Looking back on my

00:08:17.200 time in school, I can even see this creeping into sort of my generation. I'm the oldest generation of

00:08:22.400 Gen Z, so born in 1997. And I mean, I grew up in a private Christian school, but even then I could still 1.00

00:08:27.760 really see that we all kind of had this trend of appealing to victimhood, oh, this isn't fair,

00:08:33.600 this isn't fair. And, you know, we weren't even exposed to things like the Black Lives Matter

00:08:36.960 movement. But I think it's so prevalent nowadays for young people is like, well, you know, I've had

00:08:41.040 a harder time because I'm a woman and my male colleagues have it easier. And, you know, I've had

00:08:45.280 a harder time because I'm a person of color and people don't perceive me the same. And people are

00:08:48.880 always kind of looking for ways to say that life isn't fair and it's harder for certain people.

00:08:52.480 And I think that we focus so much on this lens of victimhood as opposed to how to be resilient

00:08:58.400 and how to see your differences actually as something to be proud of. You know, as a woman,

00:09:02.400 I come at things sometimes from a different angle than my male colleagues. And I think that's awesome.

00:09:05.680 And as a woman, I can have, I can have children and that's an amazing blessing to be able to be a

00:09:09.840 mother and to have that bond with your babies. That's so much different from a father's bond with

00:09:13.680 his babies and seeing the ways that you're different as a really source of strength, as opposed to

00:09:18.560 something that you should be angry about. And I think that's done a lot of damage to individual

00:09:22.960 people and to what you were saying about some of those signals that we're seeing of rising causes

00:09:26.880 of depression. And I think it's also just bad for society as a whole. Now, is that something that

00:09:32.080 you've given any thought to at your school and you try to do something differently? Or would you say that

00:09:36.000 your approach is just totally different, that you don't focus on those lessons of victimhood as much?

00:09:42.320 Well, absolutely. So, I mean, I think it probably goes without saying to your audience that I

00:09:47.520 don't espouse the oppressor-oppressed lens as one that's very useful. I think it compresses the vast

00:09:54.240 complexity of the human experience into sort of a unidimensional plane of who is oppressing whom,

00:09:59.600 and then according moral worth to whatever the imagined oppressed group is. I think that's an

00:10:05.920 incredibly pernicious lens and it doesn't conduce at all to living in a healthy pluralistic society and

00:10:11.840 it doesn't conduce to human flourishing or happiness for people on either side who get pegged with sort of

00:10:18.160 either side of that dichotomy. No, I do, however, recognize that there are some people who adopt

00:10:27.680 these approaches who are well-meaning. I don't think they've thought very hard about it, but their goal

00:10:33.120 is they see a group that has suffered maybe historical oppression, maybe continues to face

00:10:39.920 some barriers, might encounter sort of slurs or let's say sort of racially targeting language or

00:10:49.040 something from classmates on occasion. And I think there are well-meaning people who see that and say,

00:10:54.080 well, we need to do something about this. You know, fair enough. But I would suggest that the way we

00:11:02.560 try to approach this in our school is by teaching students to be virtuous. So rather than saying you

00:11:09.600 cannot bully people based on X identity, it's how do you cultivate the qualities of magnanimity,

00:11:16.160 tolerance for difference, charity toward others. And so it's a much more, I think,

00:11:22.320 sort of universally applicable approach to developing these kinds of character traits in

00:11:28.160 students rather than telling them that, you know, these identity groups are sacred.

00:11:35.280 So, Caitlin, you're obviously doing things very differently than the public system.

00:11:39.120 And unlike the private system, either schools are still free to attend, which I'm sure is,

00:11:43.680 you know, a major advantage is private schools can be extremely costly even here in Alberta.

00:11:47.760 I was actually surprised when we were chatting earlier and you mentioned the three campuses. I feel like

00:11:51.040 every time I talk to you, you're opening a new campus. It seems that, you know, the charter schools

00:11:55.600 that you've opened have just grown so quickly and there's so many people who want to get in.

00:11:59.280 Could you explain a little bit about the three campuses now? When did you start

00:12:02.800 and when did you open your last campus?

00:12:06.240 So we started less than two years ago. We opened our first campus in Calgary and it was about

00:12:11.600 just under 300 student elementary school in Calgary's Bridgeland community. We then were sort of

00:12:18.160 overwhelmed with demand once word of mouth started spreading about what we were doing in the school.

00:12:22.400 So we grew with more than tripled in size in our second year, opening two new campuses, an additional

00:12:30.720 K-8 campus in Calgary and a K-7 campus in Edmonton. Those will be growing up into K-12 campuses

00:12:36.720 eventually. We have interest from families in Lethbridge and Red Deer and I think Grand Prairie,

00:12:42.960 who all want us to expand and open schools in those markets. But in Calgary and Edmonton too,

00:12:49.760 it's, you know, it's actually quite devastating that we've tripled in size. We intend to continue

00:12:56.080 to grow substantially this year, but the interest in our school is rising at an exponential rate

00:13:02.800 that exceeds our capacity. So we have, at last check, I think we had 3,700 applicants so far for this

00:13:09.760 upcoming academic year. We could have filled, I think, about 50 kindergarten classes based on the

00:13:16.240 demand for kindergarten. Wow. And you just mentioned all those other cities across the province where

00:13:21.280 there is interest. Are you guys sort of tentatively looking at opening another school and another city

00:13:25.600 or maybe even another campus in Calgary or too soon to announce any of that? It's too soon to announce,

00:13:31.280 I think, you know, the challenge is we want to grow and we want to accommodate as many families as we can

00:13:35.280 without compromising the quality or the culture of the programming that we're altering.

00:13:40.880 I think it really speaks to sort of the frustration that we're seeing in the public school system.

00:13:45.040 You know, there's been so much interest in the programs that you're running. Likewise,

00:13:48.560 I know a lot of families are moving to homeschooling. We've seen that grow as well.

00:13:52.240 You mentioned earlier Alberta is the only province that allows charter school. Why do you think it is

00:13:56.480 that they're not currently allowed in other Canadian provinces?

00:13:59.520 That's a fantastic question. I think there is a lot of residual misconception about charter schools.

00:14:08.400 A lot of people associate them with private schools, so they think that they're elite institutions.

00:14:13.920 This isn't the case at all. Overwhelmingly, for example, our families come from areas of the city

00:14:19.280 where their local district public schools tend to be failing schools. So it's a lot of new Canadian 1.00

00:14:25.840 families. It's a lot of families who don't have the means. So the socioeconomic means to access

00:14:31.680 expensive or elite private education. So I think there's misconceptions there.

00:14:37.600 And there's a lot of there's a lot of opposition from unions, teachers unions, typically to charter

00:14:44.400 schools because our teachers are not unionized. So they're not paying union dues. And I think there's

00:14:50.000 some opposition from the big district boards, partly because they see charters as the competition.

00:14:58.800 I think academically oriented charter schools in particular tend to vastly outperform their peers

00:15:05.120 in the regular public system. This casts them in negative relief. Charter schools have historically

00:15:09.840 done that with fewer resources, not more. So it sort of belies the argument that all that's needed is

00:15:15.840 more funding somehow. So rather than trying to learn from and emulate what charter schools are doing,

00:15:21.920 I think too often the large district boards just try to sort of try to shut them out and make sure

00:15:28.560 that they can't access capital or buildings and try to lobby against them at the political level.

00:15:35.600 Kaylin, I know you mentioned that you have a pretty massive waitlist for parents who are hearing this

00:15:40.320 and they're thinking, wow, I would really love one of those charter schools in my city. Is it best that they

00:15:44.960 let you know that there's interest there? What's the best way for them to proceed?

00:15:49.280 We do on our website, if you go to classicalacademy.ca and poke around a little bit, you'll find

00:15:55.440 that we have interest lists for families in Red Deer and Lethbridge currently that they can sign up to

00:16:01.360 if they want to support a school like this. Well, Kaylin, I know you're very busy. There's a lot of

00:16:07.120 young kids relying on you for a good education. I really appreciate you carving out some time to join us today.

00:16:11.680 Kaylin, thanks so much, Rachel. All right, everyone. That's all we have time for.

00:16:16.560 I hope that you guys enjoy the rest of your week. God bless.

00:16:19.360 I hope that you guys enjoy the rest of your week.

00:16:24.240 Thank you.

00:16:26.240 Thank you.

00:16:28.240 Thank you.

00:16:30.240 Thank you.

00:16:32.240 Thank you.

00:16:36.240 Thank you.

00:16:40.240 Thank you.

00:16:43.120 Thank you.

Juno News - May 29, 2024

Alberta charter schools are booming

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript