As enrolment continues to increase annually, both the Calgary Board of Education and Calgary Catholic School District are strapped for cash as funding per student remains flatlined.
At just over $10,000 per student, the Calgary Board of Education (CBE)’s per-student funding continues to fall short of inflation and has remained largely unchanged since the 2018-19 school year.
CBE Superintendent and CFO Brad Grundy said during the Nov. 25 CBE Board of Trustees meeting that the dollars don’t stretch as far as they used to.
“If per student funding is relatively flat and funding is only increased for enrolment growth, then we’re short the inflationary cost pressures associated with the cost of delivering public education,” he said during the meetings.
“We’re also short the costs associated with any change in the makeup of the student population.”
Heightened in recent weeks after the October 2025 province-wide teachers’ strike, Grundy said the Board of Trustees and CBE administration have spoken at length about the growing classroom complexity for the board as a whole, but when per student funding stays flat, classroom sizes tend to increase and supports stay the same or even diminish.
“Fundamentally, we need to look at who our students are and what their needs are, and then how we meet those needs within the dollars available to us. Obviously, more difficult if we’re not getting inflationary increases, or if all of the costs of labour increase, we have to find those dollars internally,” he said.
Finding similar funding shortfalls, the Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD)’s per student funding was $10,614 in 2024-25, a $500 increase compared to 2016-17, but well below the national provincial averages.
According to an Alberta Teachers’ Association article published earlier this year, the national per student funding average was $13,692 in 2022-23 and averages for Alberta were $11,464.
Overall strong year for Calgary Catholic
Throughout the 2024-25 school year, the CCSD saw an operating surplus of $9.9 million.
As finances trended positively throughout the year, administration directed savings back into schools in the form of additional furniture, equipment and technology to support enrollment growth and classroom needs, according to Vanessa Croswell-Klettke, CCSD Superintendent, Finance & Business, Treasurer.
At a total system administration cost of $18.6 million, or 2.6 per cent of total operating expenses, CCSD remained below the provincial system administration cap of 3.2 per cent of expenses.
Similar to the CBE’s positive year, the CCSD’s better-than-anticipated results were driven by additional provincial funding received after the budget was approved and savings in utilities after a mild winter and insurance.
Some unfilled staff positions played into the surplus, according to Croswell-Klettke.
“With close to 80 per cent of the district’s dollars spent on staffing, even short-term time differences in filling positions can create measurable variances across an organization of nearly 6,000 employees,” she said during the Nov. 26 Board of Trustees meeting.
Transportation is an area where the district is facing cost pressures. For 2024-25, total transportation expenses were $29.4 million, supported by $23.1 million in provincial transportation funding and $1.4 million in transportation fees, leaving a net shortfall of approximately $4.7 million.
Croswell-Klettke noted that provincial transportation funding is not keeping pace with inflation.
