Alberta NDP education critic and deputy leader Sarah Hoffman speaks in front of Medicine Hat High School on Sept, 7, 2022. (Photo Courtesy Ross Lavigne)

By Chris Brown

Education critic in Medicine Hat today

Alberta NDP wants more teachers, more supports in classrooms

Sep 7, 2022 | 4:51 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The Alberta NDP education critic says people are telling her that they want money from the province’s $13.2 billion surplus to go back into classrooms.

And that’s what Sarah Hoffman says her party would do.

“Number one, I can tell you that we would at a minimum restore, there are a thousand fewer teachers in Alberta classrooms right now than there were when Rachel Notley was premier so that seems like a no-brainer,” she tells CHAT News.

“Get more teachers back into classrooms, make class sizes reasonable, support mental health and development of students. Families already have so much on their plates. If we can make it a little bit easier in terms of them gathering some additional support around youth mental health, children’s mental health, having more supports in schools definitely would go a long way to helping Alberta families.”

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Hoffman, also the party’s deputy leader, is in Medicine Hat Wednesday to meet education officials and parents before hosting a town hall at the Esplanade at 6 p.m.

On the new curriculum the United Conservative Party established and rolled out to kindergarten to Grade 6 students this year, Hoffman says Albertans deserve a curriculum that is world-class and “sets kids up for their futures, not somebody else’s past.”

She says an NDP government would work to launch a curriculum consultation within its first 100 days that “gets on a path to something that we can all be proud of.”

The Medicine Hat town hall is the second of four being held across the province this month. Anyone who can’t make it to the town hall can provide feedback on the Alberta NDP website.

At the Calgary town hall earlier this week, Hoffman says she met a kindergarten teacher, an IT teacher and parents who all told her about classrooms with too many students and not enough support or equipment.

“Hearing some of those struggles that families are going through right now, teachers and other educators are going through, at the same time the government’s bragging about all of this additional revenue that came through because of natural resource revenues … a lot of people are saying they want to see that go to work to address some of the significant gaps that have been created over the last few years,” she says.

She says while the UCP and its leadership contenders are talking about power and keeping the NDP out of government, Albertans are talking to her about affordability, education and health care.

“I’m going to keep listening to the people who live in this province,” Hoffman says. “They’re our real bosses and the UCP can continue with the infighting and we’ll present a unified front under Rachel Notley and the NDP in the upcoming provincial election and give people a chance to vote for that.”