Alberta School Board Trustee Candidate questionnaire
Dear Trustee Candidate,

Parents for Choice in Education (parentchoice.ca) is an Alberta-based, non-profit organization that supports Alberta students by advocating for excellence in education through maximum parental choice.

The following twelve questions are being provided to public and Catholic school trustee candidates across Alberta to inform voters on key educational issues for the October 18th election.  

For additional background information for each question, we have provided an online resource guide with embedded hyperlinks which you can access at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZYSqlq1SW5BwX_zBK00b1lryr5Xcn5ZUnDtN-NsdfGc/edit?usp=sharing

Please record your responses in the Candidate Response Form below, answering with "Yes", “Somewhat" or "No" to each question.

We expect that candidates who respond with “Somewhat” to any of the questions will provide the nuance of their answer in the “Additional Comments” section.

Responses will be published on our website (www.parentchoice.ca/2021_trustee_election) early in October and shared through our mailing list and social media to thousands of voters who are highly engaged in the area of education. We will also distribute responses to other groups to share with their networks.

Deadline to submit responses is 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 1st, 2021. Candidates who receive the survey, but choose not to respond will be noted publicly.

 Thank you for your participation and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Trustee Candidate Name *
Email *
Please select your School District
In case we missed your School Jurisdiction, please enter its name here
Your specific Ward/Area (if applicable)
Please provide any links to your social media and/or website that you would like us to include in our Voter's Guide.
#1. Do you agree that all education laws, school board policies and best practices in Alberta should comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Family Law Act when it comes to the right of parents to direct, and be fully informed about, all aspects of their children’s education?
Clear selection
#2. Do you support subsidiarity - the idea that distant levels of government should not make decisions that are best understood and resolved at the local level?
Clear selection
#3. Do you agree parents should be permitted to choose the location, type and style of education (i.e. home-based, language, interest, faith-based, etc.) that best suits their child, free of bureaucratic, union or government coercion?
Clear selection
#4. Do you agree that the Alberta government should provide equitable funding to all education settings, whether public, Catholic, francophone, independent, faith-based, charter, alternative and supervised home education?
Clear selection
#5. Do you agree that the Alberta curriculum should leave room for chosen educational interests - such as history, faith, the arts, sport, language, or STEM for example - and refrain from prescribing excessive content which unduly crowds out local thematic interests?
Clear selection
#6. Do you agree that curriculum development must be transparent and focused on clearly defined and foundational basic skill and knowledge outcomes in core subject areas?
Clear selection
#7. Do you agree with providing a system of high-quality standardized testing based on specific scholastic skills and knowledge outcomes, created by independent testing organizations? Examples might include the Canadian Test for Basic Skills or international tests such as the PISA.
Clear selection
#8. When it comes to communicating student progress for Grades 7-12, would you agree that an objective and clear reporting system of percentages and class averages (as opposed to descriptive terms only) is important?
Clear selection
#9. Do you agree that any school board policy that forces teachers to keep secrets from parents is unacceptable, and if elected would you move to repeal any such policies?  For example, the NDP government in 2017 forced boards to pass a policy regarding certain student clubs that said “notification, if any, respecting a voluntary student organization [...] is limited to the fact of the establishment of the organization or the holding of the activity.”
Clear selection
#10. Currently, provincial legislation requires that parents be provided notice when a program of study includes subject-matter that deals primarily and explicitly with religion or human sexuality (Education Act - Section 58.1). Do you agree that this notice and opt-out opportunity should continue to be provided?
Clear selection
#11. Do you agree that a parent’s legislated right to be informed of and allowed to opt out of material primarily and explicitly of a sexual or religious nature should be construed by the Board to extend to the use of sexual or religious instructional resources and online portals used across subject areas, such as the Prism toolkit?
Clear selection
#12. Do you agree that every school board should establish a procedure for vetting and obtaining parental consent when it comes to individual external facilitators accessing students during both instructional and non-instructional time?
Clear selection
If you have any additional comments that you would like have publicly available, especially if you answered "somewhat" to any of the questions above, please provide them below.
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