Education Minister David Eggen plans to meet with Chinook's Edge School Division (CESD) officials.
The purpose of that meeting would be to discuss a suggestion by CESD superintendent Kurt Sacher that a holistic entity be created to fund and oversee Horizon School in Olds, which deals with developmentally-challenged students.
Earlier this summer, United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership hopeful Brian Jean and UCP member Leela Aheer (then the Wildrose Party's education critic) toured Horizon School.
During that tour, Sacher said the school division has nowhere near enough money to operate that school appropriately, so CESD officials are pulling money from elsewhere in their budget to help cover those costs.
Sacher suggested creating a kind of super ministry under which all the various aspects of the help these kids need ñ like education and health care, would be provided from one source.
Sacher said because CESD is the only school division in the area providing the kind of education Horizon School is offering, parents are desperate for their kids to get that kind of programming, so they're moving to Olds to ensure their kids can be enrolled in that school. As a result, the school is overflowing with students.
"I'm interested in ensuring the success of Horizon School," Eggen said. "I mean, it's a regional need and they can become a victim of their own success because they're very good at what they do, and so people will literally move in to Chinook's Edge in order to get their children the special care that they need.
"So yeah, I definitely recognize that those kinds of programs need special attention and in the past sometimes they have not received that.
"So we know that we will meet the needs and the programming and the financial needs of all of our students and we don't want school boards to be shortchanged and compromising their budgets in other areas in order to pay for special education.
"So yeah, I'm looking at it for sure and I'm anxious to get down to Horizon personally to see what's going on," he added.
Eggen was asked if the provincial government can afford to set up a "super ministry" for places like Horizon School when oil is hovering in the $45 per barrel range.
"Well, you need to look after your students, regardless," he said. "I mean, you have to make sacrifices perhaps in other areas to ensure that education is strong during an economic downturn, and so we've done that over the last couple of years.
"I think it was a good investment, right? You know, you create this shock absorber in a region where education's still being funded. You still have to educate the kids and you know, over time, the investment pays off and it sort of allows the economic downturn to be less severe in specific areas, too," he added.
Eggen alluded to the fact that Jean recently said if he's leader and the UCP forms government, it would cut spending by $2.6 billion, although he did not specify where those cuts would be made.
"You know, Mr. Jean and other parties who wish to cut $2.5, $3 billion out of the budget immediately should stop and do the math. Not just on the balance sheet, but on the longer term economic projections of balance, which includes ensuring proper education for kids, health care when we need it, infrastructure and so forth ñ and realize that that's a worthwhile longer investment that actually pays bigger dividends than rather making reactive cuts whenever the price of oil goes down," Eggen said.
"I'm looking at it for sure and I'm anxious to get down to Horizon personally to see what's going on."DAVID EGGEN EDUCATION MINISTER
