Education minister Thomas Lukaszuk announces changes that will give parents a secular option for their kids in Morinville, Alberta.
The Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division would lose its “public” status and instead become a separate school district in St. Albert, Morinville and Legal under a new name — Greater St. Albert Roman Catholic Separate School District.
That change would create the untenable situation of having two separate systems operating in St. Albert, so Lukaszuk is calling for St. Albert Protestant Schools to lose its separate status and instead become the city’s public school system. His proposal suggests the new name St. Albert Public School District.
Replacing Protestant boards with a secular system is a good step forward. I’m not sure if this counts as a total win since the Catholics still keep their schools and if the proposal goes ahead there will still be two systems operating in the same small town leading to inefficient and expensive education. And why are the Protestant schools are getting the ax and not the Catholic’s? (There is precedence- the Protestant system in Ontario was largely dissolved into the public system it has today.)
Whatever the reasons, quoting an education minister calling for religious schools to lose its separate status and become a public system is good rhetoric I’d like to see repeated across the province-and the country.