Today the New Democratic Party of Alberta held a press conference in Nose Creek Park to call on the provincial government to restore and increase unit funding to help kids with complex needs in Alberta schools.

Amanda Chapman, Alberta NDP Critic for Services to Children with Disabilities, Airdrie parent Dustin Horlacher and Education Critic Rakhi Pancholi were in attendance to share their thoughts on how more funding would better help students across the province.

According to Chapman, a classroom is a complex environment and in order to give all children the opportunity to succeed, we need to prioritize support for kids with complex needs.

"We are calling on the UCP government to do the right thing and not only immediately restore program unit funding, but increase it. Parents and educators have told us that an increase of $100 million is needed to provide the necessary support for children to learn effectively."

Pancholi talked about what the NDP would do if they were the elected government.

"Here in Airdrie, an Alberta NDP government would have built new schools. We committed to a new K-8, a new 1500 Student High School and a new K-9 Catholic school right here in southwest Airdrie," stated Pancholi.

Horlacher has two kids, Carson and Kyptin. Carson who has Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) also spoke at the press conference explaining how learning can be tough for Carson with no extra help.

"I really don't know how a teacher can cope with a class of 28 students, especially when they have somebody like my son in the class."

Carson is a curious young boy who loves school, but he can get bored and disinterested very regularly.

"It's heartbreaking for us to think that every day Carson goes to school with a nice packed lunch, but there's nobody to sit with him and help him eat it. If he had adequate support, an educational assistant would take the strain off his teacher not only addressing a few of Carson's needs but perhaps helping them eat his lunch."

In response to the press conference, Demetrios Nicolaides, Minister of Education issued this statement.

"Alberta’s UCP government is making responsible new investments in Education. Budget 2023 increased education funding by 5.2% or $1.8B in new funding over the next three years. Alberta is also the only province in Canada that offers funding for education programming to children as young as 2 years 8 months old.  Part of that funding is being directed to hire up to 3,000 education staff including teachers, educational assistants, counsellors, and psychologists. These targeted new measures will help address classroom complexity challenges and ensure that individual students have the supports they need. In total, our UCP government is investing almost $1.5B to support vulnerable students. We will also be investing $414M over the next three years to hire more bus drivers and increase bussing options to parents and families and further invest $50M to support mental health pilot projects in our schools."

Rocky View Schools has just surpassed the 28,000-student mark this year.

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