The Alberta School Councils’ Association (ASCA) acknowledges the difficult announcement by the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) that was made September 10, 2025. The ASCA wants to thank the ATA for providing advance notice of intent to strike, for their good-faith position on the matter, and for prioritizing their relationship with parents, care givers and school communities.

Investing in Alberta’s future means we need to invest in our classrooms, and ASCA has had longstanding policies calling on the Government of Alberta to appropriately fund education. This includes accounting for classroom complexity, salaries and specialized resources that positively support student learning conditions. It is important we see beyond this one year and look to how this will impact school communities 5 or 10 years down the road—this is not a single-year situation. This is about the future of our classrooms and our children’s learning environments.

“There is value in the relationships forged between students, teachers and parents—these are cornerstones of students’ success in education. But that success comes at a real-world cost,” said Ken Glazebrook, the ASCA’s president. “We keep hearing announcements of new initiatives, but the increasing of funding is absent in those announcements.” Glazebrook pointed to the weighted average funding formula adjustment from three years to two years as a positive step, but a lack of appropriate funding for the thousands of new students entering the K–12 school system with current year-over-year enrollment growth across the province.

“We have maintained that this discussion is between the Government of Alberta and the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and have consistently tried to respect the bargaining process,” said Meagan Parisian, ASCA vice-president. “Given that the ATA voted 94.5 per cent to affirm a strike vote in the spring, and that it appears there has not been significant movement since that time, as this conversation moves forward, it's imperative for all stakeholders to work together to find sustainable solutions that prioritize both fair compensation for staff and maintain essential and critical resources for students' learning.”

School councils support the school community, both in the present and while looking ahead to the future. School councils have a legislated duty to communicate with their school community population, and the ASCA has created a template that school councils can reference on how they can continue to communicate and will provide more resources to support school communities during labour disruptions (should they occur) in the coming days.