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Press Room

Official Media Releases

Support Our Students deems changes to UCP K-6 draft curriculum insufficient and calls for a complete rewrite

12/13/2021

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 
December 13, 2021

Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta
’s response to today’s announcement by Minister LaGrange of changes to the implementation of the draft K-6 curriculum is that the changes are minimal and cosmetic in nature, and do not represent the substantive and overarching revision that Albertans have called for.


Some elements of the curriculum
criticized by experts will still be implemented in Fall 2022. The government plans to implement English language arts and literature, math, and physical education and wellness portions of the draft curriculum, while science and fine arts (music) will be updated and launched at a later date. 


Today’s announcement made it clear that public pressure has forced the government’s hand to some degree; the disastrous social studies curriculum will not be implemented in its current form. However, the
design blueprint that the Minister referred to as the guiding document for refinement of the curriculum does not differ substantially from the original draft. This is still a regressive, developmentally inappropriate approach that does not align with current expert opinion on social studies curriculum development.


“SOS Alberta advocates for all students to have universal access to high quality education. This curriculum will not prepare students for the future and will fail Alberta children. Citizens must keep up the pressure.”
– Medeana Moussa, Executive Director, SOS


Any indication of meaningful engagement with teachers and curriculum experts was noticeably absent from today’s press conference. SOS believes that no meaningful progress on curriculum development can be made without full collaboration with teachers and curriculum experts from the province’s universities.


Today’s press conference was an
exercise in delivering optics over substance. It was an attempt to convince voters, particularly parents, that their concerns with the draft curriculum content and process were addressed with a few superficial changes and a delay in implementation of some subjects. However the government has not stepped back from its highly politicized approach to curriculum development, or from its exclusion of teachers and curriculum experts from meaningful input. 


​SOS
renews its calls for the Premier and the Minister of Education to:
  1. Reconvene the curriculum working groups from the previous rewrite that began under the Prentice government and to fully respect the professional expertise of these groups.
  2. Commit to the longstanding, apolitical curriculum development process, and dissolve the appointments of advisors selected at the recommendation of UCP politicians.
  3. Restore the curriculum development partnership with the ATA, as without the expertise and engagement of teachers, successful curriculum development and implementation is impossible.

                                                                                              -30-


Please direct media inquiries to:
Wing Li (she/her)
Communications Director
E: [email protected]

SOS ALBERTA CALLS FOR URGENT REINSTATEMENT OF CONTACT TRACING IN SCHOOLS & DAILY CASE TRACKING

9/8/2021

 
Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta is urgently calling on the Alberta government to reinstate public health contact tracing for schools, which was eliminated by a change in provincial guidelines. With this change, schools will no longer receive notifications from Alberta Health Services regarding positive test cases or exposures. Public health will not step in until at least 10% of a school population is absent. This is an utter abdication of government duty especially as the school year has started amid rapidly rising cases of highly transmissible Delta variant.
 
Last year (2020/21), families relied heavily on contact tracing to know when/if students were exposed at school. During a public health crisis, having open and transparent knowledge is necessary for decision-making at the individual and community level.
 
Because of government’s withdrawal of school-based contact tracing, the scarcity of case notifications is preventing SOS Alberta from continuing our COVID-19 School Tracker in the same consistent format as last year. Our School Tracker was updated every day. It was viewed over 4 million times by over 430,000 Albertans. This speaks to the huge public demand for transparent and up-to-date school case information.
 
However, after one week of school in session, current available data is so insufficient that our community sources simply do not have adequate data to provide. Furthermore, we reiterate unequivocally that it is the job of government to provide this essential tracking protocol as they have the centralized resources and infrastructure administered by public funds. By withholding case statistics, the government is creating a massive information black hole and throwing families into even more tumultuous uncertainty.
 
“After 18 months of this pandemic, the AB government still refuses to prioritize safer schools and have now withdrawn even the basic tool of contact tracing for schools. Parents & guardians need to know if their child was exposed to a highly contagious disease to make complex decisions for their families in an informed and proactive manner. The government is disempowering families by withholding information.”
- Medeana Moussa, Executive Director of Support Our Students
 
While SOS Alberta cannot continue with our daily COVID-19 School Tracker due to this dearth of information, we will continue to support Alberta families by monitoring the province-wide school situation however we can.
 
Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta is a non-profit citizens’ action group advocating for universally accessible and equitable public education in Alberta.  www.supportourstudents.ca
 - 30-

Media Inquiries:
Contact Wing Li (She/her) at [email protected]
 
 
 
 

PUSHING FOR SAFER SCHOOLS: LETTER WRITING TOOL RELEASED

8/22/2021

 
Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta, with support from Alberta Federation of Labour, have released an easy-to-use letter writing tool at www.safeschoolsAB.ca for parents and community members to write to their provincial Member of Legislative Assembly or School Board Trustee. With school starting in less than two weeks, Alberta’s students need Swiss-cheese layers of protection to ensure equitable and safe access to education. Moreover, education workers should be protected in their workplaces. Rapidly rising cases of COVID-19 in the province, especially of the Delta variant, and low vaccination rates threaten the sustainability of in-person learning. Combined with the fact that children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination, government must prioritize mitigation of spread and infection in schools. We must avoid the same tumultuous roller coaster of school closures that we witnessed last school year.
 
The online tool will be available for Albertans throughout the province, featuring a database of all MLAs, and every public, separate and francophone school board trustees and superintendents.

The tool will generate letters demanding the provincial government:

1) Reinstate Re-instate Alberta Health Services notification, contact tracing, and reporting of school cases (including open reporting of outbreaks in schools)
2) Implement province-wide mandatory masking for pre-K to Grade 12
3) Directly fund portable filtration units and CO2 monitors to assess air quality in classrooms

Also, the tool will generate letters requesting school boards to:
1) Implement mandatory masking for pre-K to Grade 12
2) Install portable filtration units (plus ventilation assessments as previous guidelines pre-date COVID-19 pandemic)
3) Maintain cohorting and physical distancing

“Through years of chronic underfunding, plus deferred infrastructure updates, Alberta’s public schools need to be equipped with immediate and long-term mitigation measures to ensure every student can access a safe learning environment. The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has amplified education inequities and now more than ever we need to prioritize students.” – Medeana Moussa, Executive Director, Support Our Students

“The Kenney government is abdicating its responsibility to protect students and education staff in the fourth wave of the pandemic. That’s why we’re supporting SOS with this new online tool. We simply can’t allow 400,000 of our unvaccinated kids to go back to school without adequate protections. Albertans need to demand leadership and funding from the province. And if the province is going to persist in downloading responsibility to school boards, then we need to make sure trustees know what needs to be done: and that means mandatory masking; and CO2 monitors and air filtration in every classroom.” - Gil McGowan, President, Alberta Federation of Labour
 
Support Our Students Alberta is a non-profit citizens’ action group advocating for universally accessible and equitable public education in Alberta. 

Alberta Federation of Labour is the largest worker advocacy group in Alberta, representing approximately 170,000 workers from 29 affiliated unions.

- 30 -

Support Our Students Alberta Announces Conclusion of COVID-19 School Tracker

6/28/2021

 
Support Our Students Alberta (SOS) is announcing the conclusion of their COVID-19 School Tracker on June 30, 2021, coinciding with the end of the 2020/21 school year. The SOS COVID-19 School Tracker was started in September 2020 to provide parents, students and members of the public with trustworthy, detailed, and timely information on the COVID-19 situation in Alberta K-12 schools. SOS relied on crowdsourced submissions of COVID notification letters from thousands of parents.
​

Some facts on the SOS COVID-19 School Tracker:
  • Over 4,000 notification letters were received
  • We logged 12,067 cases in 1,526 schools and 1,873 alerts/outbreaks
  • Over 1200 volunteer hours were poured into the tracker
  • Over 430,000 Albertans visited the tracker a total of 4 million times

“In the absence of government transparency, SOS took the initiative to fill an essential information gap. Our COVID-19 School tracker became a massive undertaking as it was operational almost every school day (plus most weekends) for the entire school year, amid two major waves and high provincial case rates. Our small but mighty team spent countless hours, often late into the night, manually logging cases, keeping the tracker as up-to-date as possible. Although it was a labour-intensive project, we kept the Alberta government to account to ensure the true impact of the pandemic on schools was continuously monitored. ” 
- 
Wing Li, SOS COVID-19 School Tracker Coordinator & Communications Director

“I never expected back in September of last year that there would be as many cases in schools, or as frequently, as what we've seen over the past 10 months. The hundreds of hours I've spent volunteering to assist SOS in cataloging cases in schools pales in comparison to the millions of hours lost by students and teachers having to isolate themselves away from their classrooms this year. I hope in retrospect the SOS COVID-19 case tracking project will serve as a reminder in the future of why putting greater emphasis on student safety and evolving safety protocols throughout the school year would have helped to avoid the terrible burden COVID-19 has been on all Albertans."
- Aryn Toombs, SOS COVID-19 School Tracker Volunteer 

“I really would like to extend my utmost appreciation to the SOS volunteers who contributed a herculean effort to process the often overwhelming rate of case reports, and the thousands of parents who forwarded the notifications to us. It was hard work, but we really believed that Albertans deserved to know the truth of what was going on in their schools. Our goal was to be a trusted, accurate source, and we are very proud that we achieved that and Albertans turned to us.” 
- Medeana Moussa, SOS Executive Director

The data from the School Tracker will be archived and made available for use by researchers.
Moving forward, SOS calls on the Alberta government to prioritize school data transparency and enhance safety in schools as these are their obligations to the public.

Support Our Students Deems the UCP K-6 Draft Curriculum A Clear and Present Danger to Education in Alberta

4/1/2021

 
This Draft Curriculum, if implemented, threatens the integrity and foundational principles of the education of children in Alberta. It neglects the dignity of students by prioritizing fact memorization instead of continually building on themes to develop critical thinking. It fails to recognize children as active, curious learners who deserve age-appropriate education that fosters their innate sense of wonder and explorative inclinations in a meaningful way.
The UCP approach used to to develop this Draft Curriculum is a complete departure from all past Alberta governments and has resulted in this immensely problematic document. This curriculum process and content have been politicized which SOS believes to be an overreach of office. Support Our Students AB (SOS) points to the following significant problems:
  • The curriculum itself is age-inappropriate, misaligned with child development research.
  • ​Colonial Eurocentric themes throughout evoke racial othering and erase Indigenous voices. This contradicts the commitment to Truth and Reconciliation.
  • Overload of American history (e.g. removal of Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Grade 6) is a blatant dismissal of Canadian identity.
  • ​Education professionals and experts in curriculum delivery in Alberta were not included in a fully consultative way in its development. 
  • The unreasonable amount of content intentionally reduces the education profession from pedagogical experts to simple content deliverers. 
  • ​The disproportionate focus on religion is inappropriate for public primary school setting.

“The politicizing of this process and thereby of children aged 5-12 years old, is completely unacceptable and is an attempt to undermine public education and to shift our Canadian values. SOS completely rejects this Draft Curriculum and the new politicized approach undertaken by the Kenney government.” Medeana Moussa, Executive Director SOS
SOS calls on the Premier and the Minister of Education to:
  1. Reconvene the curriculum working groups from the previous rewrite that began under the Prentice government and to fully respect the professional expertise of these groups.
  2. Commit to the longstanding, apolitical curriculum development process, and dissolve the appointments of advisors selected at the recommendation of UCP politicians.
  3. Restore the curriculum development partnership with the ATA, as without the expertise and engagement of teachers, successful curriculum development and implementation is impossible.

RELEASE: Budget 2021: K-12 Public Education Left Behind

2/25/2021

 
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 
February 25, 2021
Contact: Wing Li, Communications Director, [email protected]

Budget 2021: K-12 Public Education Left Behind
After a year full of unpredictability, one area that remains predictable is Jason Kenney’s continued underfunding & undermining of Alberta’s public education system, as seen in the UCP’s 2021 Budget released today.
As advocates for equitable, accessible and quality public education, we are concerned with this government’s continued de-prioritization of education. This budget’s failure to properly restore stability for students and education workers is particularly insidious. 

Pandemic mismanagement and overspending as an excuse to deny schools what they need
The pandemic has exacerbated and amplified inequities for students, but instead of taking this as an opportunity to restore or add essential resources, Kenney is using their mismanagement of the pandemic and overspending through poor planning as an excuse to further erode public education by denying school boards desperately needed funding. Students are clearly left behind in the so-called ‘recovery plan’ tabled today. Most boards have now completely drained their reserves; many of which were forced to deplete their small pool of resources to accommodate for safety measures, staffing shortages and to support online learning. 


“Flat funding” is in reality a cut per student
As anticipated, the UCP continues the tired use of coded language “education funding held flat at $8.2B” to cover up actual funding cut per student when rising enrolment, inflation, and continued need for pandemic measures are taken into account. Introduction of the weighted moving average model last year hid many of these cuts but in practice, per-student funding continues to drop compared to pre-2019 levels.

Unwavering fixation with MacKinnon Report

In 2019, the ideological MacKinnon Report set the stage for Kenney’s multi-year agenda to cut education spending to be more “in line with other provinces.” Since 2019, the UCP have been so unwavering in their austerity that we saw back-to-back education cuts, and Kenney even underfunded pandemic relief, leaving students and education workers vulnerable to COVID-19 exposure in the past year.

Inadequate COVID-19 relief & inadequate resources to restore stability
The meagre and disingenuous quote of $88M earmarked for a “safe return to schools & critical worker benefits” is a glaring deficiency. Eligibility and application of these funds will likely be tied up in red tape and shuffled from other defunded education grants. As children will not be eligible for vaccines in the foreseeable future, they remain susceptible. Instead of bolstering school safety for the long-term, this government has shown that students’ health and safety continue to be non-priorities. Further, school boards are preparing recovery programs to help bridge gaps from a year and a half of tumultuous disruptions. Boards may need to extend online/hybrid learning options in the fall and beyond. Students will require supplemental supports in the year(s) ahead after widespread disruptions through COVID. But there continues to be no concrete plan for students and no vision for their future.
​

In a critical time when the confluence of the pandemic, chronic underfunding, and social inequities have come to a boiling point, the UCP have shown they don’t have a proactive plan forward. They merely react and use external factors as excuses for their lazy, unimaginative financial decisions. Despite the UCP’s obsession with “Choice in Education,” Albertans have consistently shown that they choose PUBLIC EDUCATION, and will continue to do so. Equitable, robust and barrier-free public education is a fundamental pillar for a healing society. As such, without sincerely prioritizing public education, Kenney’s superficial pandemic ‘recovery plan’ is not worth the paper it’s printed on.

For questions related to this release, please contact Wing Li, Communications Director at [email protected].

-30-



SOS ALBERTA RESPONDS TO ANNOUNCEMENT OF IN-PERSON CLASSES RESUMING JANUARY 11:                  LACK OF PLANNING UNDISCIPLINED & RISKY

1/7/2021

 
​Following Premier Kenney’s announcement this afternoon that Alberta K-12 students will return to in-person classes January 11th, Support Our Students Alberta is extremely concerned about the actual sustainability of learning. We are equally concerned for the health and safety of students and education workers in the coming weeks. Premier Kenney failed to announce much-needed resources to maintain school stability in the current pandemic context. Given this, we believe this decision is politically biased, and fails to properly centre the real needs of students (physical, mental, developmental) for sustained, safe learning. They are being sent back without sufficient risk mitigation. Kenney DID NOT use the time since Nov. 30 when Gr 7-12 went online to prepare an evidence-based plan to avoid the roller coaster of quarantines, contact tracing collapse, and escalation of school cases we witnessed in the fall. 
 
“Despite having an additional six weeks to improve supports for schools, Premier Kenney is choosing to forge ahead with the same non-plan for schools they have had since the start of this pandemic.” - Medeana Moussa, Executive Director, SOS Alberta
 
The lack of adequate transparency of school cases and in-school transmission data to the public have bred a high level of general distrust and confusion in this announcement. This announcement, lacking in vision and preparedness, is another example of dangerously undisciplined policy-making that further erodes public trust in Kenney’s duty to protect Alberta students & Albertans in general.
 
 
Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta is a non-profit citizens’ action group advocating for universally accessible and equitable public education in Alberta.  www.supportourstudents.ca
 
Please direct inquiries related to this statement to Wing Li, Communications Director.
 
-30-

SOS Alberta and RAD Educators Call on the Minister of Education to Definitively Cancel all Standardized Tests for the 2020/21 School Year

11/16/2020

 
Monday, November 16, 2020         
For Immediate Release                        
    
Demanding students write standard exams in a non-standard year shows complete disregard for the impact COVID19 is having on our education system
 
Standardized exams are structured so all test takers answer the same questions under the same conditions. But clearly, conditions are not standard this year. The pandemic has caused significant disruption to learning environments. Support Our Students and RAD Educators Network jointly call for the cancellation of both Provincial Achievement Tests and Diploma exams for all students this year. 
 
There is a vast disparity, province-wide, in students’ learning environments; almost 30% of students in Edmonton Public are registered in at-home learning compared to 18% in CBE;  some high schools have condensed learning time by shifting to quarterly semesters while others have remained unadjusted. In addition, thousands of students have had to isolate for weeks at a time, further disrupting their education. COVID-19 case numbers, school closures and transitions to Scenario 3 (at-home learning) are increasing throughout Alberta, the situation shows no sign of abating. 
 
Placing the onus of standardized exam continuation on school boards and students creates further inconsistency and compounds the issue. This needs to be a centralized decision, the Minister of Education needs to definitively cancel standardized exams. 
 
Medeana Moussa, Executive Director of Support Our Students says “[i]t is nonsensical for the Minister of Education to refuse to adjust for the widespread disruption to learning in this pandemic school year. It is irresponsible to forge ahead as though students' learning hasn’t been impacted, and continue to allocate money to standardized tests when funding for education is scarce. Alberta students deserve a definitive cancellation of PATs and Diplomas this year.” 
 
RAD Educators Network believes “Standardized tests measure privilege more than academic achievement. An over reliance on these exams risks creating a narrowed curriculum instead of encouraging critical and creative thinking throughout a student's learning. Good teacher observation, documentation of student work, and performance-based assessment, provide a much more accurate metric of student learning outcomes. We call for the Minister of Education to cancel standardized tests full stop.”
 
Support Our Students Alberta is a non profit citizens action group advocating for universally accessible and equitable public education in Alberta.  www.supportourstudents.ca

The RAD Educators Network is a collective of educators (teachers, professors, researchers, activists, early-childhood educators, etc.) from across Alberta who are working for equity and social justice education.  www.medium.com


Please direct inquiries to:
SOS Alberta: Wing Li, Communications Director.  Email: [email protected]    
RAD Educators Network: Cathryn van Kessel,  Twitter: @RADEducators  Email: [email protected]
                        

​

SOS ALBERTA CALLS FOR GOVERNMENT REPORTING ON FULL IMPACT OF COVID-19 IN SCHOOLS, INCLUDING ISOLATION STATISTICS

9/10/2020

 
Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta welcomes today's belated announcement from the Government of Alberta on the launch of a COVID-19 school tracking website. SOS calls on the government to report data on the full impact of COVID on the school community, including the number of isolated staff and students. Following reports of hundreds of staff and students isolated for 14 days after only a few days of school, Albertan families are owed transparency on the full extent of disruption caused by COVID-19 in our schools, as this disruption has a direct impact on their lives and livelihoods.
 
“That, after six months of preparation of a ‘robust’ plan, the Government of Alberta was not prepared to offer Albertans a trusted source of COVID-19 school information in time for school re-entry truly highlights how little this government understands the concerns of parents and how little effort they invested in preparation. The public demand for this information from a trusted source was eminently foreseeable,” explained Medeana Moussa, Executive Director of Support Our Students.
 
In lieu of an official source of information, and in anticipation of parent demand for a trusted source, SOS launched its own COVID-19 tracking website prior to the first day of school. SOS recognized the realities of how Alberta families exist in both their school and neighbourhood communities, how those communities can be different yet overlapping. SOS understands the concerns of parents whose children may go to schools outside their communities, such as interacting with children in neighbourhood playgrounds. For these reasons in the first four days of operation, SOS’s COVID-19 tracker was visited over 48,000 times. Albertans have come to trust the SOS COVID-19 tracker as a timely and reliable source; SOS will continue to operate its own tracker until the Government can demonstrate a comparable degree of timeliness, completeness, and credibility. 
 
SOS adds schools/updates to our tracker if an official communication by a school, school authority, or AHS has been made to the school community, or reported by a reputable media source. The SOS tracker makes no inferences or assumptions about the events, simply tallies them and provides access to the confirmed communication.
 
Support Our Students (SOS) Alberta is a non profit citizens’ action group advocating for universally accessible and equitable public education in Alberta.  www.supportourstudents.ca
 

SOS ALBERTA CALLS FOR FEDERAL FUNDING TO GO TOWARDS PUBLIC SCHOOLS; FUNDS MUST BE DIRECTED TO REDUCE CLASS SIZES

9/2/2020

 
For immediate release: 
September 2, 2020
 
Support Our Students calls on the provincial government to invest the funding from the federal government for safe openings into supporting smaller class sizes in Alberta public schools. We also call for detailed accountability of how the funds are allocated and transferred to school divisions.
 
Smaller class sizes will allow for greater physical distancing and will result in higher quality education. The evidence is clear that physical distancing of 2 metres is critical to minimize the spread of COVID-19 in schools and in the wider community.
 
Medeana Moussa, Executive Director of Support Our Students explains that “persistent underfunding of public schools in Alberta has resulted in over crowded classrooms. This has always been a concern from a student learning perspective but now, in a pandemic, this neglect of our public schools is exacerbated and magnified as an emergent health issue. The Alberta government has a responsibility to use these funds to make the return to school safer for our students, our teachers and our communities while improving the quality of education and addressing this long standing problem.”
 
COVID-19 has widened the gap between high and low income families and has had the same disproportionate impact on students. Many families do not have the option to stay at home and engage in online learning. It is effective and equitable to invest this federal money in making schools physically safe for all in a way that will have a lasting impact on Alberta’s education system. 
 
The Federal government announced $2 billion in support for provinces and territories last week through the Safe Return to Class Fund. Alberta will receive a maximum allotment of $264.84M in two installments, the first in September 2020 and the second in the early part of 2021. This funding would represent the most government funds Alberta schools have received during this health crisis.
 
Support Our Students Alberta is a non profit citizens action group advocating for universally accessible and equitable public education in Alberta.  www.supportourstudents.ca
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Support Our Students Alberta is a non-partisan public education advocacy organization with chapters across Alberta. We are run by passionate volunteers and community donations.

Media and press comment requests: [email protected]

SOS acknowledges that we advocate in Treaties 6, 7 & 8, traditional territory of the Cree, Blackfoot, Metis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene and Ojibway/Saulteaux/Anishinaabe. We are grateful to work on their land and we pledge that this organization will actively work to end systemic racism and pursue truth and reconciliation.

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