Calgary schools add hundreds of teachers and support staff as enrolment climbs

The Calgary Board of Education is adding hundreds of teachers and support staff as the school year approaches, fueled by rising enrolment and increased provincial funding for students with complex needs.

The province has earmarked more than $200 million across Alberta schools for additional special-needs resources. The CBE will have dedicated classroom complexity teams at 118 schools through this initiative. CBE superintendent Joanne Pitman said the district has added hundreds of teachers and is continuing to hire for 41 complexity teams covering all grades.

"We have schools who are seeing, on top of what they had last year with the same number of teachers, that they will have three to five teachers more in some cases, and that's with their enrolment remaining steady, which is great news for students, families and our staff," Pitman said.

The CBE is projecting enrolment of 143,000 students — up slightly from the two previous years — with an official head count due by the end of September. The district counts about 17,000 employees total, up from approximately 16,000 in recent years.

Complexity teams typically consist of one teacher and two assistants focused on students with diverse academic, behavioural, social, emotional and mental-health needs. In February, the CBE reported that about 27,500 students — roughly one in five — have special education needs, a figure that has grown significantly over four years. An estimated 44,000 students are learning English as an additional language, 17.6 percentage points higher than the rest of the province.