whip by on the highway, past rolling fields of canola, past long gravel roads, past little schools that once were.
Year after year, more rural Alberta schools face the threat of closure. But what’s changed? Why are these places, places that have been educational landmarks and the hearts of rural communities for decades, disappearing?
Goodbye to Rural
Things are changing in Alberta. While the trend toward urbanization is ubiquitous, Alberta is a unique entity both nationally and internationally. But what does our province’s growth as an economic powerhouse have to do with rural schools?
It seems that with Alberta’s progression comes the decline of rural populations. According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of people currently occupying rural areas in Canada is almost the lowest worldwide. Lagging only slightly behind British Columbia and Ontario, Alberta comes in third for hosting the lowest number of rural residents across the country.
Larry Jacobs, superintendent of Wolf Creek Public Schools (WCPS) in central Alberta, has seen two rural schools through closure. He said one of the main factors contributing to the cessation of smaller schools is people giving up rural life for the big city.
“One of the biggest problems is the shift in demographics away from rural communities to larger urban centres,” Jacobs said. “That has a large impact on rural school communities, and now we’re seeing fewer and fewer students coming into the schools.”
The Funding Formula
Another problem Day put forward was although the current funding formula presents a way to distribute funding equally, it still hampers the success of rural schools. Because the amount of money a school receives depends on how many students are enrolled, a rural school with only 80 students will end up living well below the educational poverty line.
“We’ve been pushing for funding changes so it’s on a needs basis rather than per capita,” Day explained. “Each school has different needs, and within reason I think we should be able to have the funds we need to run our schools.”
Lying east of Calgary is the Prairie Land Regional Division (PLRD), a vast expanse of rural territory. Wes Neumeier, superintendent of PLRD, echoed Day’s worries, suggesting that what the government calls an equitable distribution funding formula may in fact be causing some serious inequities.
“When the government is announcing they’ve increased funding to education, almost the totality of that increase is taken up by increases in enrolment,” Neumeier explained.
“And that’s being realized by urban school districts, not rural school districts,” he added. “As that imbalance keeps taking place, you have to offer rural schools more so they can balance the decline in numbers.”
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Unsurprisingly, another tough issue rural schools face is funding.
Currently funding for education in Alberta is distributed on a per capita basis, meaning funding is received based on the number of students in a school. In the 2013/2014 school year, Alberta Education noted that “the average per pupil operational funding was $10,111.”
Along with increases in government funding for kindergarten to Grade 12 education, this may seem like a fair enough formula. But if that’s the case, why are rural schools still having such a hard time staying afloat?
Parent Jennifer Day said because the funding structure has been built on a per capita basis, rural schools — many of which host less than 150 students — aren’t seen as the most opportune institutions to invest government dollars in.
“When it’s per capita, 80 students doesn’t seem very viable,” Day said. “But from a community perspective, it does seem viable to us to have that many students in our school.”
Even though rural schools can acquire extra money through the government Small Schools by Necessity Funding, the base amount allocated ($88,281) will remain the same for the 2014/2015 school year, meaning schools with steadily declining enrolment will not see any increases in government funding in that arena.
In the wake of the closure of two small schools in the Wolf Creek Public Schools jurisdiction, superintendent Larry Jacobs said he expects the trend to continue if the funding formula stays as is.
“Currently, there’s not a funding structure to look after rural schools,” Jacobs said. “Boards are caught in a very difficult conundrum. As
numbers go down, sometimes to support a smaller school it takes more and more funds from other schools in the division.”
Because the funding formula is on a per student basis, with increases in enrolment schools should also see increases in funding; while this is good news for larger schools in urban areas, it doesn’t do much to support schools a quarter of their size.
“As long as that remains the funding foundation, small rural schools are going to suffer,” Jacobs added. “If we start to look at rural schools as entities unto themselves, if the funding structure adapts to meet that, then I think we can start to progress in a different direction.”
T
aking a trip through rural Alberta, things don’t look as they used to. Schoolyard parking lots are grey and empty. Classroom desks sit gathering dust. Swings are at a standstill. And all the while, business is as usual. Cars continue to
According to Statistics Canada, Alberta's urban areas have seen a significant influx of residents over the past 50 years. As the trend towards urbanization continues, rural zones are becoming less and less desirable.
“Nobody wants to stay and farm, and that’s one of our main resources as a province,” she explained. “We need these natural resources across our country to stay vibrant, and saving our rural communities is part of that.”
A worry for rural community advocates like Day is that with the rural economy growing at half the pace as the rest of the province, these small schools may soon be rendered obsolete.
Jennifer Day, a parent with five children in a rural Wetaskiwin school that narrowly dodged closure this year, said as Alberta’s metropolises continue to boost the province’s booming economy, it’s not much of a surprise to see a decline in rural populations.
“People are moving into Alberta like crazy,” Day said. “And while the provincial population is rising, the rural population isn’t. If the rural population is declining, that’s a problem when there’s so many people coming in.”
Day added that not only do waning populations adversely affect the number of students enrolled in rural schools, but they also impact one of Alberta’s main resources: agriculture.
This past summer WCPS was forced to close Satinwood School, a school that had stood proudly in central Alberta for close to 100 years. With a dwindling number of young families moving into the area, Satinwood’s enrolment numbers began to suffer.
“When I first came here as superintendent, Satinwood was running close to 100 students, which makes it a very viable school,” Jacobs explained. “But for enrolment to drop into the thirties, it’s a reflection of a tremendous geographical shift.”
And shift might be an understatement. Statistics show that Alberta has grown by almost 64 per cent since the early 1980s. Not only does the province boast the strongest growth rate in Canada, but this number is nearly 15 times that of the Atlantic provinces, which have grown by only 4.4 per cent in the last 30 years. Data from the Conference Board of Canada’s 2012 report on rural communities revealed that in 2010 alone, the urban population in Alberta skyrocketed by 30 per cent.