The Calgary Board of Education (CBE) is hoping for a face-to-face meeting with Alberta Education Minister David Eggen to talk about a back-and-forth over busing.
According to board chair Joy Bowen-Eyre, Eggen has criticized the CBE for its reaction to Bill 1 and the province’s transportation plan.
“We have shared every aspect of our plan, our communication, anything going out to parents and we were assured that our communication to our parents was good and it was good to go,” Bowen-Eyre said Thursday.
“We would assume that if the minister was unhappy, that he would have reached out directly to us as a board.”
Officials have said the bill was rushed and didn’t give them enough time to consult with parents.
“Normally, we would have presented a plan, we would have received feedback from our public before actually implementing that plan,” trustee Trina Hurdman said. “Unfortunately, these tight timelines did not allow time to do that.”
Bowen-Eyre said Eggen told reporters on Wednesday that he expected the “CBE to do better” when it came to alternative programs, which came as a shock to CBE officials, leading them to wonder if Eggen was being left out of the loop.
“We have had daily phone calls, daily emails and regular consultation in person, that’s with our staff and ministry of education staff,” Bowen-Eyre said. “We have reached out to the minister of education and requested meetings. To this date, we have not had a meeting.”
“We have worked hard to support the students and staff at Calgary Board of Education and are providing the board $41 million more in operating funding for the coming school year—a 3.8 per cent increase year-over-year,” Eggen’s office said in a statement Thursday.
“Staff with Alberta Education will also be reaching out to CBE officials in the coming days to initiate an operational review,” the statement concluded.