I’ve been reading the opinion pieces in the Calgary Sun lately. (I know, I know, I shouldn’t. But it’s always offered to me at work, and I sometimes get a laugh out of reading it.)

There has been a lot of talk about how textbooks in Albertan schools are thrown out each year as new ones come in. I think it’s great that we have the resources to get the most up to date textbooks in our schools; it’s great for our education system! However, if it is true that these books are thrown away (Could someone please confirm it, I emailed the Calgary Board Of Education one month ago an did not get any response.), I think they could be put to much better use.

Starting within the province, we could go to other school districts that may be strapped for cash, and offer to give them better text books. This could easily be done by setting up a database on the internet. Each time a school wants to replace its textbooks, it must place the ones they want to get rid of on an online database. Other schools then can view this database and if they need any of the text books they can request to have them. This would be a great way to improve our education system in Alberta and we would also be helping out the environment at the same time. And if the text books are so obsolete that no one wants them, then we can recycle them.

This does not just need to happen within the province of Alberta only though. I know that when I was in British Columbia, we were using text books from the 70’s/80’s. If provinces could trade with each other, this program would be even better.

Sometimes the solutions are simple.

When I first moved to Alberta from British Columbia about three years ago, I was surprised by the school fees for high school. The total for the school year was around $400. In British Columbia my father was only paying $50/year and $25 of that was deposit that he would get back at the end of the year. Being low income at the time, that was a tough pill to swallow. (And yes, I am aware there is a waiver system. But that system is very complex, and we could not even fill out the application since we were new to Alberta and they required an Alberta Health number, which we could not get till living in Alberta for some amount of time.)

I was so concerned that I wrote to the Minister of Education with my feelings. Shortly after I received a reply stating how Alberta has the most funding per student in the entire country.

So where is this money? I compare the school fees to British Columbia. I compare the class sizes and see them much larger in Alberta. Numerous schools in Calgary have leaky roofs. Where is all this money that I am being told about?

I really think it’s time for an audit on the School Boards, and also on the cities and the province. I think Albertans will be really surprised to see what a massive audit will find.

Edited to add: Also before I moved out to Alberta, I had never heard of fundraising for school essentials. I see casinos every year at most of the schools in Calgary to fundraise for these essentials.