Hoping the provincial government will follow suit, Edmonton's Catholic school board has eliminated school fees for next fall.

Pointing to Alberta's economic woes, trustees unanimously agreed Tuesday to give up the estimated $7 million school fees pull in each year, given the difficulty some families have scrounging up the cash.

"This is not something that we just have extra money, so we're giving it to our parents," trustee Debbie Engel said. "I would like to make eminently clear that we expect the government of Alberta to come through with their promise to eliminate school fees."

The pilot project for the 2016-17 school year will see 33,000 Edmonton Catholic students pay nothing out of pocket for borrowing textbooks, using libraries or any other mandatory school resource.

Optional activities, field trips, teams, clubs and music programs may still see schools charge a fee, according to a school district news release.

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Families pay at least $50 a year in fees for elementary students and up to several hundred dollars for high school students, Edmonton Catholic school board chairwoman Marilyn Bergstra said.

The school district's 2015-16 budget is $459 million. The $7 million will come out of both the district's budget and individual school budgets.

A trim of that magnitude is difficult to accomplish, Bergstra said, particularly when school districts are anticipating little new spending in the upcoming provincial budget.

Trustee John Acheson said the board will have to revisit the policy in a year, and may have to reinstate or partially reinstate the fees without some help from the provincial government.

"Other school boards in the province might be mad at us," Acheson said.

Trustee Cindy Olsen said the move is not meant to send the message the NDP government can wiggle out of its commitment to fund the cost of public education.

"My only difficulty with this motion is ... at this point, we can't sustain it, and I don't want anything to be one year only, so I call strongly on the government to look at what they have and keep the promise for the elimination of school fees."

An estimated 20 per cent of students attending Edmonton Catholic schools live in poverty, trustee Larry Kowalczyk said. If the board continues the practice, he'd like to see it apply just to low-income families.

"We have to hold (the government's) feet to the fire to not only eliminate school fees, but to pay us for those monies we are losing," Kowalczyk said.

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