The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - Alberta charter schools are booming

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host, Rachel Emanuel. Today,

00:00:15.080 I am joined by a new guest and a very impressive woman, if I do say so myself. I'm joined by

00:00:20.540 Kaylin Ford. She is the founder of three Alberta Classic Academy schools. Two locations are in

00:00:26.300 Calgary and one of them is in Edmonton. And she's joining us today to talk about what is unfolding

00:00:30.900 in Alberta's public schools. Kaylin, thanks so much for being here today. Well, thanks for inviting me,

00:00:35.260 Rachel. So the reason I wanted to have this conversation with Kaylin this week is because

00:00:38.980 I saw an interesting tweet from the Alberta's Teacher Association this week, which appears to

00:00:43.480 have had their annual general meeting. They tweeted out this week, delegates have passed a resolution

00:00:48.080 that states, be it resolved that teachers are able to demonstrate support for safe spaces for all

00:00:53.700 students and teachers through the utilization and display of pride materials in their classrooms.

00:00:59.140 So Kaylin, you obviously fall under a different registration. You are a classical academy school.

00:01:03.960 Could you just start by explaining for our audience how that differs from Alberta public schools?

00:01:09.480 Sure. So the Alberta Classical Academy schools are public charter schools. Alberta is the only

00:01:14.200 province in Canada that allows charter schools. And basically, we're very similar to public school,

00:01:19.440 to other public schools, except that we have our own autonomous boards of directors. So we're not

00:01:24.660 beholden to the large district school boards or metro boards. We have distinctive philosophies,

00:01:30.620 pedagogical approaches. Some charter schools serve particular student populations. So for example,

00:01:36.280 a girls only education, indigenous focused education, those are some of the other existing charter

00:01:40.960 schools in Alberta. And our teachers are not unionized. But beyond those differences,

00:01:45.720 we still follow all of the regular statutory and regulatory requirements that apply to other public

00:01:50.940 charter schools, sorry, to other public schools. And our schools are tuition free for all the

00:01:56.960 children who attend. So when we saw this tweet, you know, they're specifically saying we're going to

00:02:01.380 focus on putting pride materials in the classroom. That's very important in the public school system

00:02:05.680 right now, sort of pushing this agenda and this ideology down children's throat. Is this something that

00:02:11.540 you would mirror in charter schools? Well, all charter schools are different, right? Each one is governed

00:02:17.840 by their own board, and they have a distinctive mandate. In classical education, we, I think we take

00:02:25.140 the general approach that we try to leave the outside world on the outside. And we want our schools to be

00:02:31.520 a respite from ideological, political contestations that are going on outside. So our students study

00:02:39.140 classic texts, things that have endured through centuries or millennia, we try to cultivate an

00:02:43.960 environment that is very orderly, very calm, our hallways have classical art and architecture

00:02:49.800 displayed there. But you know, we, like Chesterton had a great line that you want, you don't want

00:02:56.420 people to suffer the degrading servitude of being children of their own time. And the way we do that

00:03:01.040 is by trying to expose them to things that are eternally good and true and beautiful.

00:03:04.540 So when you say, you know, we really want to sort of shield our kids from what's going on in the

00:03:09.660 world outside, obviously, the pride movement is one of those things that's going on in the world

00:03:13.040 outside. And that's really sort of taken over in schools. But you're saying that might be a

00:03:17.300 conversation that's happening right now in politics, but we are going to teach our students

00:03:21.860 things that have really withstood the test of time.

00:03:25.520 That's right. And the same applies to, you know, for example, international conflicts or other sort of

00:03:30.380 social issues or contestations. I think in general, many of those things are divisive. They produce

00:03:37.440 anxiety in children needlessly. In the case of pride materials, for example, we believe that parents

00:03:43.520 are the primary educators of their children, and that parents should have a really important role

00:03:48.220 in dictating if and how and when their children learn about human sexuality. So we're not going to

00:03:55.460 try to usurp that role from parents. So we talk about sex education. I mean, I grew up in Ontario.

00:04:01.100 This is something that they've started introducing to basically kindergarten students. It's really

00:04:05.280 quite depraved. Do you guys just avoid sex education entirely? Or do you wait till high school? How does

00:04:10.700 that work in specifically your classical academies? I love this question. Partly because we're currently

00:04:19.420 developing our approach to sex education to human sexuality and health and wellness. So for one,

00:04:25.920 this is an area where legally parents in Alberta have the ability to opt their children out of

00:04:31.340 classes that deal primarily with human sexuality. So that informs our approach as well. Everything

00:04:36.920 that we do, we try to be as transparent as possible with our parents about what's happening in the

00:04:41.700 classroom, what kind of questions their children are asking, what sort of philosophical lens we would

00:04:46.860 apply to answer those. But we do, I mean, we do teach about human sexuality. It's an important part

00:04:52.500 of being human. You know, so we teach accurate age appropriate information about biological facts,

00:05:00.800 human anatomy, physiology, you know, reproductive systems. So we teach the Alberta programs of study,

00:05:10.860 but I think that we have a distinctive lens that we apply to that. So for example, we recently had a

00:05:16.520 talk with all our teachers about how do you apply an Aristotelian virtue ethics lens to the study of

00:05:21.460 human sexuality and help provide students with a more comprehensive ethical framework for making

00:05:28.160 good decisions in that domain. So when we were talking a little bit before about how your schools

00:05:33.780 focus on really lessons that have stood the test of time, I was just reminded of a funny meme that I'm

00:05:38.140 sure lots of my audience has seen circulating online. A young person, they're on their first day at the

00:05:42.620 job, a new job, and they're trying to figure out what to do. And they're just thinking,

00:05:45.840 oh, what was I taught in school? And the thing that pops into their mind is a pride flag.

00:05:49.540 So I'm wondering, you know, with these modern public institutions that focus so much on pride,

00:05:55.020 for example, and BLM and all these types of things, how is this really preparing students for the real

00:06:01.560 world when, you know, sometimes life's just hard and you still got to go out and you got to earn a

00:06:05.160 living and you just have to move forward? Do you feel like public schools are doing an adequate job

00:06:09.220 of preparing young people?

00:06:12.500 So, I mean, I think the obvious question is being surrounded by flags and political symbols in

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

00:06:27.640 there, and this is reflected in the Alberta Teachers Association resolution, is that somehow this makes

00:06:34.280 children safe? And I'm very curious, and I've tried asking people now, but I haven't received any

00:06:40.080 coherent responses. What evidence do we have that children are safe when they see

00:06:46.860 flags, pride materials, et cetera, in the classroom? By what mechanism does this make them safe?

00:06:53.420 I don't think that we have any evidence that supports the suggestion that students' mental

00:06:59.520 health has improved the more rainbow flags they see. And maybe the opposite, maybe there's some, 0.52

00:07:05.540 I think, some circumstantial evidence that might suggest maybe the opposite, that a rise in anxiety

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

00:07:17.460 displays in classrooms. Not saying that that's the causal relationship, it's just interesting to note.

00:07:24.080 But I think there's another idea at work here, which is that children need to be sort of constantly

00:07:31.240 made to feel safe and affirmed. And I think it's priming them to view themselves as very emotionally

00:07:36.580 fragile. So when the implication is that you're not safe, if you don't see symbols constantly affirming

00:07:42.460 a particular aspect of your identity, I don't think that that's actually doing anyone any favors,

00:07:48.060 let alone the people for whom that is not their identity.

00:07:50.840 So, for example, I wonder how safe and included conservative or religious students feel in a

00:08:00.060 classroom where they're constantly exposed to pride materials, right? So, sorry, that was a long way

00:08:07.940 of answering that question. I'm not sure I answered it. But I think there's some interesting threads that

00:08:11.800 could be pulled on there.

00:08:13.500 Well, I think you raise a really interesting point, something I've reflected on. Looking back on my time

00:08:17.540 in school, I can even see this creeping into sort of my generation. I'm the oldest generation of Gen Z,

00:08:23.060 so born in 1997. And I mean, I grew up in a private Christian school. But even then, I could still

00:08:27.820 really see that we all kind of had this trend of appealing to victimhood. Oh, this isn't fair. This

00:08:33.880 isn't fair. And, you know, we weren't even exposed to things like the Black Lives Matter movement. But

00:08:37.600 I think it's so prevalent nowadays for young people is like, well, you know, I've had a harder time

00:08:41.800 because I'm a woman and my male colleagues have it easier. And, you know, I've had a harder time

00:08:45.880 because I'm a person of color and people don't perceive me the same. And people are always kind

00:08:49.400 of looking for ways to say that life isn't fair and it's harder for certain people. And I think

00:08:53.620 that we focus so much on this lens of victimhood as opposed to how to be resilient and how to see

00:08:59.040 your differences actually is something to be proud of. You know, as a woman, I come at things sometimes

00:09:03.320 from a different angle than my male colleagues. And I think that's awesome. And as a woman, I can have

00:09:07.320 children. And that's an amazing blessing to be able to be a mother and to have that bond

00:09:11.200 with your babies that's so much different from a father's bond with his babies and seeing the ways

00:09:15.360 that you're different as a really source of strength as opposed to something that you should

00:09:19.480 be angry about. I think that's done a lot of damage to individual people and to what you were

00:09:24.260 saying about some of those signals that we're seeing of rising causes of depression. And I think

00:09:28.920 it's also just bad for society as a whole. Now, is that something that you've given any thought to

00:09:33.100 at your school and you try to do something differently? Or would you say that your approach is

00:09:36.740 just totally different, that you don't focus on those lessons of victimhood as much?

00:09:41.200 Well, absolutely. So, I mean, I think it probably goes without saying to your audience that I don't

00:09:47.880 espouse the oppressor-oppressed lens as one that's very useful. I think it compresses the vast complexity

00:09:54.800 of the human experience into sort of a unidimensional plane of who is oppressing whom and then according

00:10:00.360 moral worth to whatever the imagined oppressed group is. I think that's an incredibly pernicious lens

00:10:07.440 and it doesn't conduce at all to living in a healthy, pluralistic society. And it doesn't

00:10:12.340 conduce to human flourishing or happiness for people on either side who get pegged with sort of

00:10:18.320 either side of that dichotomy. No, I do, however, recognize that there are some people who adopt these

00:10:28.020 approaches who are well-meaning. I don't think they've thought very hard about it, but their goal

00:10:32.940 is they see a group that has suffered maybe historical oppression, maybe continues to face

00:10:40.000 some barriers, might encounter sort of slurs or let's say sort of racially targeting language or

00:10:49.140 something from classmates on occasion. And I think there are well-meaning people who see that and say,

00:10:54.040 well, we need to do something about this. You know, fair enough. But I would suggest that the way we try

00:11:02.840 to approach this in our school is by teaching students to be virtuous. So rather than saying

00:11:09.480 you cannot bully people based on X identity, it's how do you cultivate the qualities of magnanimity,

00:11:15.980 tolerance for difference, charity toward others. And so it's a much more, I think,

00:11:23.660 sort of universally applicable approach to developing these kinds of character traits in

00:11:28.220 students rather than telling them that, you know, these identity groups are sacred.

00:11:35.620 So Kaylin, you're obviously doing things very differently than the public system. And unlike the

00:11:40.140 private system, their schools are still free to attend, which I'm sure is, you know, a major advantageous

00:11:44.760 private schools can be extremely costly, even here in Alberta. I was actually surprised we were

00:11:48.960 chatting earlier and you mentioned the three campuses. I feel like every time I talk to you,

00:11:52.000 you're opening a new campus. It seems that, you know, the charter schools that you've opened have

00:11:56.460 just grown so quickly. And there's so many people who want to get in. Do you explain a little bit

00:12:00.300 about the three campuses now? When did you start? And when did you open your last campus?

00:12:06.160 So we started less than two years ago, we opened our first campus in Calgary, and it was about

00:12:11.220 just under 300 student elementary school in Calgary's Bridgeland community. We then were

00:12:17.980 sort of overwhelmed with demand once word of mouth started spreading about what we were doing in the

00:12:22.140 school. So we grew with more than tripled in size in our second year, opening two new campuses,

00:12:30.000 an additional K-8 campus in Calgary and a K-7 campus in Edmonton. Those will be growing up into

00:12:35.760 K-12 campuses eventually. We have interest from families in Lethbridge and Red Deer and I think

00:12:42.400 Grand Prairie, who all want us to expand and open schools in those markets. But in Calgary and Edmonton

00:12:49.580 too, it's, you know, it's actually quite devastating that we've tripled in size. We intend to continue to

00:12:56.360 grow substantially this year. But the interest in our school is rising at an exponential rate that

00:13:03.180 exceeds our capacity. So we have, at last check, I think we had 3,700 applicants so far for this

00:13:09.940 upcoming academic year. We could have filled, I think, about 50 kindergarten classes based on the

00:13:16.460 demand for kindergarten. Wow. And you just mentioned all those other cities across the province where

00:13:21.380 there is interest. Are you guys sort of tentatively looking at opening another school and another city

00:13:25.700 or maybe even another campus in Calgary or too soon to announce any of that? It's too soon to announce.

00:13:31.340 I think, you know, the challenge is we want to grow and we want to accommodate as many families as we

00:13:35.020 can without compromising the quality or the culture of the programming that we're altering.

00:13:40.860 And I think it really speaks to sort of the frustration that we're seeing in the public

00:13:44.200 school system. You know, there's been so much interest in the programs that you're running.

00:13:48.240 Likewise, I know a lot of families are moving to homeschooling. We've seen that grow as well.

00:13:52.420 You mentioned earlier, Alberta is the only province that allows charter school. Why do you think it is

00:13:56.600 that they're not currently allowed in other Canadian provinces? That's a fantastic question.

00:14:04.800 I think there is a lot of residual misconception about charter schools. A lot of people associate

00:14:09.800 them with private schools. So they think that they're elite institutions. This isn't the case at all.

00:14:16.020 Overwhelmingly, for example, our families come from areas of the city where their local district

00:14:21.400 public schools tend to be failing schools. So it's a lot of new Canadian families. It's a lot of 1.00

00:14:26.940 families who don't have the means. So the socioeconomic means to access expensive or elite

00:14:32.720 private education. So I think there's misconceptions there. And there's a lot of there's a lot of

00:14:40.260 opposition from unions, teachers unions, typically to charter schools, because our teachers are not

00:14:46.000 unionized. So they're not paying union dues. And I think there's some opposition from the big district

00:14:54.460 boards, partly because they see charters as the competition. I think academically oriented charter

00:15:00.880 schools in particular tend to vastly outperform their peers in the regular public system. This

00:15:07.320 casts them in negative relief. Charter schools have historically done that with fewer resources,

00:15:11.440 not more. So it sort of belies the argument that all that's needed is more funding somehow.

00:15:17.880 So rather than trying to learn from and emulate what charter schools are doing,

00:15:22.080 I think too often the large district boards just try to sort of try to shut them out and make sure

00:15:28.680 that they can't access capital or buildings and try to lobby against them at the political level.

00:15:35.940 Kaylin, I know you mentioned that you have a pretty massive waitlist for parents who are hearing this

00:15:40.480 and they're thinking, wow, I would really love one of those charter schools in my city. Is it best that

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

00:15:49.200 We do on our website, if you go to classicalacademy.ca and poke around a little bit, you'll find

00:15:54.900 that we have interest lists for families in Red Deer and Lethbridge currently that they can sign up to

00:16:01.500 if they want to support a school like this.

00:16:05.320 Well, Kaylin, I know you're very busy. There's a lot of young kids relying on you for a good education.

00:16:09.600 I really appreciate you carving out some time to join us today.

00:16:13.180 Thanks so much, Rachel.

00:16:14.940 All right, everyone. That's all we have time for. I hope that you guys enjoy the rest of your week.

00:16:18.780 God bless.

The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - May 29, 2024

Alberta charter schools are booming

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