In another attempt to ease class sizes and complexity issues, the Alberta Government has announced the allocation of $200 million dollars to be used to hire teachers.

Between the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) and the Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD), Calgary’s public schools will be receiving more than $70 million, which should lead to 543 full-time equivalent teachers.

As part of Budget 2026, the government announced record-high education funding, including $300 million to help address class size and complexity-related issues. The hiring funding announced Wednesday comes from that allocation.

During the announcement, Alberta Minister of Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, said the one-time grant will make a noticeable change.

“Back in November, our government and school board partners completed the most comprehensive data collection exercise in Alberta education history,” Nicolaides said.

“We collected detailed information from over 108,000 classrooms across the province. The funding and new teachers announced today will be provided to school boards to support the hiring of 1,481 new teachers for the largest K-9 classrooms in Alberta, as identified by our data.”

Teachers’ association is skeptical

Though the funding will make an immediate impact once teaching positions are filled, the ability to fill those positions and the long-term funding of teachers hired is still up in the air, according to Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) President Jason Schilling.

“We have seen time and time again, the government makes funding announcements for a school year that don’t materialize in the next budget for the following school year,” he said.

“We need to make sure that any measures by government that are aimed to address complexity and class sizes are being maintained through the next several years. Problems are not going to be solved by a magic Band-Aid of funding for one year.”

Schilling said that the ATA will hold both the government and school boards across Alberta accountable in using the government cash.

“We’ll monitor to see when they get the funding from government, how they use them to make sure that they’re actually using this funding for what it is meant for, that they are hiring teachers to reduce class size, that they’re hiring teachers for complexity teams and not keeping that money at central office for other purposes,” he said.

“We also have the ability to ask our members questions, which is within our right as a union to see just how we are seeing impacts within the classrooms.”

While the Alberta Ed announced new funding for complexity teams in February, many of those positions remain unfilled. Schilling still questions where the teachers needed to fill these openings, both for the complexity teams and newly announced hires, will come from.

“I know that school boards are struggling to find individuals to fill in these spots. This is a government and a school board issue, and it really goes back to the government respecting the profession,” he said.

“One of the ways that they could start that is to restore teachers’ Charter rights. Teachers have felt demonized by this government for a while, making positive steps to restore those rights, to make sure that they respect teaching as a profession will draw more people to want to teach here in Alberta.”

Grateful for funding: Calgary school boards

In a statement provided to LWC, the CCSD said they were grateful for the funding announced through the Class Size Reduction Grant.

“CCSD’s Board of Trustees continues to advocate for sustainable and equitable funding for all students, the resources needed to build and open Catholic schools in the communities we serve and increased staffing and supports to address growing classroom complexities,” the statement reads.

“This announcement will help support those ongoing efforts.”

Similarly, a statement shared with LWC on behalf of the CBE Board of Trustees welcomed the Government of Alberta’s investment to help address class size pressures in kindergarten to Grade 9 classrooms.  

“For the CBE, we will receive $48.9 million to hire about 362 teachers for the 2026-27 school year. We also appreciate the flexibility provided to direct this significant funding to the schools and classrooms where it is needed most,” the statement reads.

“The Board has long advocated for increased funding that meaningfully addresses the realities we see in our classrooms every day, and we are pleased to see this investment begin to respond to those needs.”

CBE looks forward to continuing to work collaboratively with the province on increasing investment in new learning spaces and long-term, sustainable solutions that meet the needs of CBE students, according to the statement.