When is a “private” school not private?

In Alberta? Always. Every aspect, from curriculum to teacher certification, is dictated by the Ministry of Education. Christian schools have even been ordered to remove or revise their statements of faith—the very documents that defined their mission and purpose.

So no, these schools have never been “private.” But they are something else—something that enrages Alberta’s powerful public school bureaucracies:

Independent.

With Bill 51: The Education Amendment Act, 2025, the government is finally calling private and Charter schools what they are—independent schools. Not independent from the Crown, mind you. Independent from the bureaucratic baronies of public education.

Let’s be clear about how the public boards operate.

Publicly elected boards govern: they do not manage. Their only employee is a superintendent, who becomes the de facto ruler of the school division. Superintendents are limited only by legislation and the rules that a part-time board can impose on them.  In practice, this means that they have the absolute authority of a medieval baron. Trustees may carry the title of elected representatives, but they can be bullied, silenced, or sidelined if they step out of line.

Independent schools operate outside that structure. They don’t answer to the mighty public-school superintendents. They don’t participate in the political machinery of elections and weaponized codes of conduct. They serve families - not bureaucracies.

And that’s exactly why self-proclaimed “public-school advocates” attack them. They’ve used the old term – “private” schools – to imply that the independent schools are bastions of privilege, dripping in vast wealth and influence as they siphon tax dollars from the poor.  But actually, the reverse is true.  Independent school parents have a lower average income than their peers – and money siphoned from their students has long propped up the public schools.  In truth, it is the independence of those schools that the public school bureaucrats despise.

For generations, public school boards have refused to sell or lease disused school buildings to charter and independent schools. Even buildings sitting empty for years—maintained on the public dime—have been kept out of reach to protect the monopoly. Partly to fix that, the Alberta government passed the Real Property Governance Act (Bill 13, 2024) last year, making surplus schools revert to Crown ownership. This spring’s Bill 51 goes further—placing even newly constructed schools under Alberta Infrastructure, with the Minister of Education governing the process by Regulation.

This is more than housekeeping. It attacks the ability of public school boards to starve their competition of facilities. The Minister – not the administrative barons – will now decide who gets school buildings.  For independent education, this is a strategic victory.

Bill 51 also ends the ability of school boards to disqualify trustees through so-called code of conduct violations. That power will now return to voters, where it belongs.

Why does this matter?

Codes of conduct have too often been used not to protect civility, but to enforce ideological conformity.  In one case that was shared with this writer, a superintendent demanded that trustees turn over their personal cell phones, claiming the code of conduct gave her the right to search for unauthorized communications outside of board meetings.  In another, a trustee was told that they could be disciplined for publicly disagreeing with a board decision, especially if that statement contradicted the Superintendent’s line.

This is the opposite of democracy.  When it happens, an unelected bureaucrat is usurping public power. It turns a superintendent into an independent baron.

It gets worse. Administrations have also warned trustees that they have no speech privilege. Unlike MLAs, who enjoy parliamentary privilege, school board trustees are routinely told that if they speak out against the administration, they can be sued personally. And if that happens, they’re on their own.

If we’re serious about local democracy, this must change. Trustees and municipal counsellors deserve the freedom to speak the truth without fear. Elected officials who can be silenced by legal threats are not free - and neither are the people they represent.

Bill 51 doesn’t look revolutionary. But sometimes, the revolution is in the fine print. It limits the ability of public school bureaucracies to control property, silence trustees, and block independent schools. It reaffirms the authority of the Crown over Alberta’s agencies, boards and commissions (ABCs) such as school boards.  And with it, it protects the rights of families and communities to pursue educational freedom beyond the reach of bureaucratic barons.

It is subtle, strategic, and smart. Minister Demetrios Nicolaides and his staff can justly be proud of it.

Make no mistake: the real front lines in modern politics are between elected authorities and bureaucratic baronies.  And with Bill 51, the Crown can reclaim lost territory.

John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, www.parentchoice.ca

This article originally appeared in the Western Standard on April 12th, 2025. A printable pdf is available.