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But I need to acknowledge that, for years, our system’s excellence has been propped up by overextended teachers and other school staff.

Now many of us are worried about what is going to happen as additional cost restraints are placed on the system. What will happen over the next four years if an additional 60,000 students are added to Alberta schools without any additional funding, without a single new teacher hired to teach them? Teachers will not be able to continue filling the gaps.

We cannot allow this to happen.

In the months and years ahead, the Alberta Teachers’ Association will stand up as the defenders of public education in Alberta, and we are inviting parents, grandparents and the public to join us.

We need the government to commit to fully funding public education in this province. We need to have enrolment growth fully funded, without compromising funding in one program to pay for another. We need funding to reduce class sizes and to address the rapidly increasing complexity in our classrooms that comes from a diverse student population with a wide range of learning needs. We need to address the disparity that exists for smaller, rural schools and school jurisdictions.

Ultimately, we need to ensure that the government commits to making the 93 per cent of students who attend public schools (including public, Catholic and francophone school jurisdictions) in our province a priority.

But I’m worried about how fake divisions are being created to pit groups of Albertans against each other. In an effort to undermine your confidence in teachers and the public education system, we are seeing attempts to portray teachers and public schools as enemies of Alberta’s vital yet struggling energy sector. These efforts are not fair and often include misleading or incomplete information.