Alberta charter schools are booming
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Summary
In this episode of Alberta Roundup, host Rachel Emanuel is joined by Kaylin Ford, founder of three Alberta Classical Academy schools, to talk about what it means to be a charter school in Alberta and why it's important to have Pride materials in the classroom.
Transcript
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Rachel Emanuel brings the news each day on Alberta Roundup. She has her say.
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host, Rachel Emanuel.
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Today, I am joined by a new guest and a very impressive woman, if I do say so myself.
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I'm joined by Kaylin Ford. She is the founder of three Alberta Classic Academy schools.
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Two locations are in Calgary and one of them is in Edmonton.
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And she's joining us today to talk about what is unfolding in Alberta's public schools.
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So the reason I wanted to have this conversation with Kaylin this week is because I saw an interesting
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tweet from the Alberta's Teacher Association this week, which appears to have had their annual
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general meeting. They tweeted out this week. Delegates have passed a resolution that states
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be resolved that teachers are able to demonstrate support for safe spaces for all students and
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teachers through the utilization and display of pride materials in their classrooms.
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So Kaylin, you obviously fall under a different registration. You are a classical academy school.
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Could you just start by explaining for our audience how that differs from Alberta public schools?
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Sure. So the Alberta classical academy schools are public charter schools.
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Alberta is the only province in Canada that allows charter schools.
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And basically, we're very similar to public school, to other public schools,
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except that we have our own autonomous boards of directors. So we're not beholden to the large
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district school boards or metro boards. We have distinctive philosophies, pedagogical approaches.
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Some charter schools serve particular student populations. So for example, a girls only education,
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indigenous focused education. Those are some of the other existing charter schools in Alberta.
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And our teachers are not unionized. But beyond those differences, we still follow all of the
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regular sort of statutory and regulatory requirements that apply to other public charter schools.
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Sorry, to other public schools. And our schools are tuition free for all the children who attend.
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So when we saw this tweet, you know, they're specifically saying we're going to focus on
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putting pride materials in the classroom. That's very important in the public school system right now,
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sort of pushing this agenda and this ideology down children's throat. Is this something that you
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would mirror in charter schools? Well, all charter schools are different, right? Each one is governed
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by their own board, and they have a distinctive mandate. In classical education, I think we take
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the general approach that we try to leave the outside world on the outside. And we want our schools
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to be a respite from ideological, political contestations that are going on outside. So our students
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study classic texts, things that have endured through centuries or millennia. We try to cultivate
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an environment that is very orderly, very calm. Our hallways have classical art and architecture
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displayed there. But, you know, we think Chesterton had a great line that you don't want people to
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suffer the degrading servitude of being children of their own time. And the way we do that is by trying
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to expose them to things that are eternally good and true and beautiful.
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So when you say, you know, we really want to sort of shield our kids from what's going
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on in the world outside, obviously the pride movement is one of those things that's going
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on in the world outside. And that's really sort of taken over in schools. But you're saying that
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might be a conversation that's happening right now in politics, but we are going to teach our students
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things that have really withstood the test of time. That's right. And the same applies to,
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you know, for example, international conflicts or other sort of social issues or contestations.
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I think in general, many of those things are divisive. They produce anxiety in children
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needlessly. In the case of pride materials, for example, we believe that parents are the primary
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educators of their children and that parents should have a really important role in dictating if and
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how and when their children learn about human sexuality. So we're not going to try to usurp that
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So we talk about sex education. I mean, I grew up in Ontario. This is something that
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they've started introducing to basically kindergarten students. It's really quite depraved. Do you guys
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just avoid sex education entirely or do you wait till high school? How does that work in specifically
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I love this question, partly because we're currently developing our approach to sex education,
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to human sexuality and health and wellness. So for one, this is an area where legally parents
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in Alberta have the ability to opt their children out of classes that deal primarily with human
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sexuality. So that informs our approach as well. Everything that we do, we try to be as transparent
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as possible with our parents about what's happening in the classroom, what kind of questions their
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children are asking, what sort of philosophical lens we would apply to answer those. But we do,
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I mean, we do teach about human sexuality. It's an important part of being human.
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You know, so we teach accurate, age appropriate information about biological facts,
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human anatomy, physiology, you know, reproductive systems. So we teach the Alberta programs of study,
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but I think that we have a distinctive lens that we apply to that. So, for example, we recently had
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a talk with all our teachers about how do you apply an Aristotelian virtue ethics lens to the study of
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human sexuality and help provide students with a more comprehensive ethical framework for making good
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decisions in that domain. So when we were talking a little bit before about how your schools focus on
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really lessons that have wistled the test of time, I was just reminded of a funny meme that I'm sure
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lots of my audience has seen circulating online. A young person, they're on their first day at the job,
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a new job, and they're trying to figure out what to do. And they're just thinking, oh, what was I taught
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in school? And the thing that pops into their mind is a pride flag. So I'm wondering, you know, with these
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modern public institutions that focus so much on pride, for example, and BLM and all these types of
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things, how is this really preparing students for the real world when, you know, sometimes life's
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just hard and you still got to go out and you got to earn a living and you just have to move forward?
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Do you feel like public schools are doing an adequate job of preparing young people?
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So, I mean, I think the obvious question is being surrounded by flags and political symbols in the
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classroom doesn't seem to have any particular utility to me. And I think the underlying premise there
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and this is reflected in the Alberta Teachers Association resolution is that somehow this makes
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children safe. And I'm very curious, and I've tried asking people now, but I haven't received any
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coherent responses. What evidence do we have that children are safe when they see
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flags, pride materials, etc. in the classroom? By what mechanism does this make them safe?
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I don't think that we have any evidence that supports this suggestion that students' mental
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health is improved the more rainbow flags they see. And maybe the opposite, maybe there's some,
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I think some circumstantial evidence that might suggest maybe the opposite, that a rise in anxiety and
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depressive disorders in children has coincided with a growing ubiquity of these kinds of political
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displays in classrooms. Not saying that that's the causal relationship, it's just interesting to note.
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But I think there's another idea at work here, which is that children need to be sort of constantly
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made to feel safe and affirmed. And I think it's priming them to view themselves as very emotionally
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fragile. So when the implication is that you're not safe, if you don't see symbols constantly affirming
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a particular aspect of your identity, I don't think that that's actually doing anyone any favors,
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let alone the people for whom that is not their identity. So, for example, I wonder how safe and
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included conservative or religious students feel in a classroom where they're constantly
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exposed to pride materials, right? So, sorry, that was a long way of answering that question. I'm not
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sure I answered it, but I think there's some interesting threads that could be pulled on there.
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Well, I think you raise a really interesting point, something I've reflected on. Looking back on my
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time in school, I can even see this creeping into sort of my generation. I'm the oldest generation of
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Gen Z, so born in 1997. And I mean, I grew up in a private Christian school, but even then I could still
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really see that we all kind of had this trend of appealing to victimhood, oh, this isn't fair,
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this isn't fair. And, you know, we weren't even exposed to things like the Black Lives Matter
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movement. But I think it's so prevalent nowadays for young people is like, well, you know, I've had
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a harder time because I'm a woman and my male colleagues have it easier. And, you know, I've had
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a harder time because I'm a person of color and people don't perceive me the same. And people are
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always kind of looking for ways to say that life isn't fair and it's harder for certain people.
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And I think that we focus so much on this lens of victimhood as opposed to how to be resilient
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and how to see your differences actually as something to be proud of. You know, as a woman,
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I come at things sometimes from a different angle than my male colleagues. And I think that's awesome.
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And as a woman, I can have, I can have children and that's an amazing blessing to be able to be a
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mother and to have that bond with your babies. That's so much different from a father's bond with
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his babies and seeing the ways that you're different as a really source of strength, as opposed to
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something that you should be angry about. And I think that's done a lot of damage to individual
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people and to what you were saying about some of those signals that we're seeing of rising causes
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of depression. And I think it's also just bad for society as a whole. Now, is that something that
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you've given any thought to at your school and you try to do something differently? Or would you say that
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your approach is just totally different, that you don't focus on those lessons of victimhood as much?
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Well, absolutely. So, I mean, I think it probably goes without saying to your audience that I
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don't espouse the oppressor-oppressed lens as one that's very useful. I think it compresses the vast
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complexity of the human experience into sort of a unidimensional plane of who is oppressing whom,
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and then according moral worth to whatever the imagined oppressed group is. I think that's an
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incredibly pernicious lens and it doesn't conduce at all to living in a healthy pluralistic society and
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it doesn't conduce to human flourishing or happiness for people on either side who get pegged with sort of
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either side of that dichotomy. No, I do, however, recognize that there are some people who adopt
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these approaches who are well-meaning. I don't think they've thought very hard about it, but their goal
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is they see a group that has suffered maybe historical oppression, maybe continues to face
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some barriers, might encounter sort of slurs or let's say sort of racially targeting language or
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something from classmates on occasion. And I think there are well-meaning people who see that and say,
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well, we need to do something about this. You know, fair enough. But I would suggest that the way we
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try to approach this in our school is by teaching students to be virtuous. So rather than saying you
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cannot bully people based on X identity, it's how do you cultivate the qualities of magnanimity,
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tolerance for difference, charity toward others. And so it's a much more, I think,
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sort of universally applicable approach to developing these kinds of character traits in
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students rather than telling them that, you know, these identity groups are sacred.
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So, Caitlin, you're obviously doing things very differently than the public system.
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And unlike the private system, either schools are still free to attend, which I'm sure is,
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you know, a major advantage is private schools can be extremely costly even here in Alberta.
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I was actually surprised when we were chatting earlier and you mentioned the three campuses. I feel like
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every time I talk to you, you're opening a new campus. It seems that, you know, the charter schools
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that you've opened have just grown so quickly and there's so many people who want to get in.
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Could you explain a little bit about the three campuses now? When did you start
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So we started less than two years ago. We opened our first campus in Calgary and it was about
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just under 300 student elementary school in Calgary's Bridgeland community. We then were sort of
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overwhelmed with demand once word of mouth started spreading about what we were doing in the school.
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So we grew with more than tripled in size in our second year, opening two new campuses, an additional
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K-8 campus in Calgary and a K-7 campus in Edmonton. Those will be growing up into K-12 campuses
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eventually. We have interest from families in Lethbridge and Red Deer and I think Grand Prairie,
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who all want us to expand and open schools in those markets. But in Calgary and Edmonton too,
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it's, you know, it's actually quite devastating that we've tripled in size. We intend to continue
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to grow substantially this year, but the interest in our school is rising at an exponential rate
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that exceeds our capacity. So we have, at last check, I think we had 3,700 applicants so far for this
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upcoming academic year. We could have filled, I think, about 50 kindergarten classes based on the
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demand for kindergarten. Wow. And you just mentioned all those other cities across the province where
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there is interest. Are you guys sort of tentatively looking at opening another school and another city
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or maybe even another campus in Calgary or too soon to announce any of that? It's too soon to announce,
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I think, you know, the challenge is we want to grow and we want to accommodate as many families as we can
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without compromising the quality or the culture of the programming that we're altering.
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I think it really speaks to sort of the frustration that we're seeing in the public school system.
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You know, there's been so much interest in the programs that you're running. Likewise,
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I know a lot of families are moving to homeschooling. We've seen that grow as well.
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You mentioned earlier Alberta is the only province that allows charter school. Why do you think it is
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that they're not currently allowed in other Canadian provinces?
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That's a fantastic question. I think there is a lot of residual misconception about charter schools.
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A lot of people associate them with private schools, so they think that they're elite institutions.
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This isn't the case at all. Overwhelmingly, for example, our families come from areas of the city
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where their local district public schools tend to be failing schools. So it's a lot of new Canadian
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families. It's a lot of families who don't have the means. So the socioeconomic means to access
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expensive or elite private education. So I think there's misconceptions there.
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And there's a lot of there's a lot of opposition from unions, teachers unions, typically to charter
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schools because our teachers are not unionized. So they're not paying union dues. And I think there's
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some opposition from the big district boards, partly because they see charters as the competition.
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I think academically oriented charter schools in particular tend to vastly outperform their peers
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in the regular public system. This casts them in negative relief. Charter schools have historically
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done that with fewer resources, not more. So it sort of belies the argument that all that's needed is
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more funding somehow. So rather than trying to learn from and emulate what charter schools are doing,
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I think too often the large district boards just try to sort of try to shut them out and make sure
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that they can't access capital or buildings and try to lobby against them at the political level.
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Kaylin, I know you mentioned that you have a pretty massive waitlist for parents who are hearing this
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and they're thinking, wow, I would really love one of those charter schools in my city. Is it best that they
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let you know that there's interest there? What's the best way for them to proceed?
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We do on our website, if you go to classicalacademy.ca and poke around a little bit, you'll find
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that we have interest lists for families in Red Deer and Lethbridge currently that they can sign up to
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if they want to support a school like this. Well, Kaylin, I know you're very busy. There's a lot of
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young kids relying on you for a good education. I really appreciate you carving out some time to join us today.
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Kaylin, thanks so much, Rachel. All right, everyone. That's all we have time for.
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I hope that you guys enjoy the rest of your week. God bless.
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I hope that you guys enjoy the rest of your week.