EDMONTON ? School board leaders meeting in Edmonton welcomed news early Tuesday that new legislation to guide Alberta?s grade schools has finally passed.
The government?s third attempt to pass the Education Act succeeded around 12:40 a.m. Tuesday. Hours later, Education Minister Jeff Johnson told education leaders at an Alberta School Boards Association meeting they will have a say in developing the regulations that give the Education Act its teeth.
School board officials are pleased with that commitment, said Edmonton Catholic school board chair, Becky Kallal, one of about 400 trustees and superintendents who attended the ASBA meeting that ran Sunday to Tuesday in the Westin Edmonton hotel downtown.
?He was very clear that he wants to have not just window-dressing engagement of boards but really meaningful engagement of boards in developing those regulations. We?re delighted with that,? Kallal said.
?The devil?s in the details, so the regulations are what?s really important.?
The Education Act will govern schools, school boards, teachers and students and includes a wide range of changes to the more than 20-year-old School Act that it replaces. For example, it gives school boards more flexibility in their operations, raises the mandatory age of attendance from 16 to 17, and gives young adults until the age of 21 to finish their high school programs at the province?s cost. It also gives schools more authority ? and responsibility ? to deal with bullying, whether it takes place on or off school property.
Edmonton public school board chairwoman Sarah Hoffman said the extra time young adults will have to finish school will particularly benefit students.
?That?s going to be really good for kids, and that?s what we?re looking for when we?re reading through legislation,? Hoffman said. ?There are some young adults that?s going to make a real difference for, for example, at Braemar school, with pregnant and parenting teen moms. That can be such a busy time of life, to be doing that and completing high school at the same time. It?s going to make it that much more possible for these moms to complete their studies.?
The section on bullying should help school officials deal with incidents outside school grounds before problems spread into schools, said Jacquie Hansen, president of the ASBA.
?We are absolutely thrilled about this,? Hansen said. ?This is a long time coming for us. This is the third rendition of it and it?s gone through consultation after consultation, been tweaked, overhauled and all the rest. It?s good news. Now we are looking forward to working with government, our educational partners and the public to get those regulations in place that are going to support that act.?
The regulations are the ?finer brush strokes? that will fill in the legislation, which is a broad guide, the education minister said in an interview.
?That?s a fairly hefty process,? Johnson said. ?It?s going to take some consultation and some time.?
Johnson credited a huge team of people for working on the Education Act, including school boards, the Alberta Teachers? Association, home schoolers, parents and past education ministers.
?It?s been a long road and a lot of people had their hands in it but I think we?ve got a really good act,? Johnson said.
Human Services Minister Dave Hancock, who launched the effort to rewrite the School Act when he was education minister, said in the legislature it was exciting the bill passed.
?Education Act passes 3rd Reading!? Hancock posted on Twitter shortly after the vote. ?One giant step forward for #inspiringeducation.?
The new act ? the third version of the Education Act proposed in the legislature ? is the result of almost five years of work and consultations. The previous two were pulled by the government, most recently over protests from home-schooling parents, who felt references to the Alberta Human Rights Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms threatened their ability to freely share their values with their children.
That reference was removed from the third version, introduced by Johnson.
All Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose MLAs in the legislature early Tuesday endorsed the bill. The Liberal and NDP MLAs on hand voted against it in objection to references to human rights being removed.
Several school trustees were in the legislature gallery during the late night debate to observe.
NDP education critic David Eggen said he hopes regulations can deal with concerns about the lack of human rights references as well as worries that the act makes it possible for businesses to be too involved in schools.
Source: http://www.bcptl.org/?p=2269
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