EDMONTON - The Alberta government is bringing in legislation to implement a new labour deal for its 40,000 teachers.Education Minister Jeff Johnson sa...

Aggie Days, an event that celebrates a sanitized and fictitious version of modern, industrialized agriculture. Animals are cute and cuddly. They have straw in their pens and room to roam. Baby chicks, cage free and with their beaks still intact, scurry around, enjoying their last bit of freedom.

Alberta educators were left dismayed by Thursday's budget, after the government pulled out of previous promises to increase basic funding for school b...

While one might think, this is a creative way to build a school, and it is, the democratic process needs to be followed. It must be viewed through the lens of equity in Public Education. Information needs to be transparent if the public is expected to support it.

So currently we have a vast inequity in our Alberta public education system, which is likely to grow as programs like the sports school and other new innovative projects get corporate sponsorship dollars while community schools filled with new Canadians are afforded the simple bare bones basics.

This is not "Pie in the Sky", "what if" thinking. The policy is there, today and real. Agreements with corporations may be already on the works or even in place? Currently there is no mechanism for these agreements to be made public until the Corporation and the Calgary Board of Education administration decide it is time for us to know. Our publicly funded, taxpayer owned schools, branded to influence minors, right here in Calgary.

Allowing sponsorship dollars to enter Calgary Board of Education schools may open the door to schools doing what's needed to secure funding and not wh...

Recent trends in education funding in Alberta exhibit some worrying disparities. Charter and private schools currently attract considerably more resources than the poorest of schools in the public system, and they still get public per student funding. This has significant consequences. If we turn classrooms into just another market for ads, is there any reason not to expect that donor and advertising dollars are most likely to flow to the schools and parents who already have the greatest resources?

The Calgary Board of Education has recently opened the door to the naming of classrooms to corporate sponsorship. Naming of classrooms or programs leads to some very fundamental questions about public education and has many drawbacks. One of which is if you allow Coca Cola a five year deal on a school gym, why not another school sponsored by Pepsi? If they can sponsor a high school gym, how about a junior high? A middle school? An elementary?