CBE hired 475 teachers and 240 support staff for current school year as enrolment stays flat

The Calgary Board of Education has hired 475 additional teachers and almost 240 Educational Assistants as of the first day of classes for the current 2026-27 school year, the district said in response to questions HighOnCity raised about staffing levels.

As HighOnCity reported, the CBE is adding hundreds of teachers and support staff to staff complexity teams—groups focused on students with diverse academic, behavioural, social, emotional and mental-health needs—across 118 schools, fueled by provincial funding earmarked for special-needs resources.

Enrolment remained essentially flat between school years. The CBE's official enrolment for 2024-25 was 142,402 students, rising marginally to 142,403 for 2025-26. The district is projecting enrolment to climb to more than 143,000 students for the current year.

The district said hiring will continue into the fall as schools finalize their staffing based on actual enrolment figures.

The CBE did not provide a comparison of how many teachers and support staff were hired in 2024, referring instead to year-over-year hiring numbers available in the district's annual budgets.

The district also said it does not have readily available data on the number of students with special education needs in Calgary schools in 2022, making it impossible to track how that figure has changed compared to the approximately 27,500 reported in February 2025.