In one small town in Alberta, the assistant principal says teachers almost never meet alone with parents anymore.
Ever since pandemic restrictions polarized the community, he says teachers have been sending more emails rather than calling parents and risking a hostile encounter.
He’s decided he won’t live in the same town where he works as to avoid being constantly recognized as a local principal and harassed at the grocery store.
And since the provincewide teachers’ strike in the fall, he says school staff get called “overpaid babysitters” when they’re out on bus supervision.
He says it’s a sign of mistrust — of something broken in the relationship between teachers and some parents — and that in a few cases, the interactions can get volatile.
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“I’ve had to give no-trespass orders,” said the assistant principal. “Twice it’s been a parent coming in and cursing and swearing at a teacher. It’s been a parent coming in and threatening a teacher because they didn’t like the grade that a student got. They have come in and yelled at our support staff because they called to report an absence.”
He requested confidentiality because in his particular town the situation is so tense, he’s worried identifying the school would lead to more conflict.
But he’s not alone in flagging this issue. Listening to other teachers and analysts, it seems to be a challenge that’s growing — in ways that are loud and ways that are quiet — as some parents feel more and more alienated from the education system.
Teachers weigh in, disagree on cause of mistrust
In January, CBC News sent a questionnaire to 23,000 Alberta teachers and staff — all of the public-facing email addresses we could find online.
More than 6,000 people responded and in their comments at the end of the survey, dozens of teachers flagged a growing sense of mistrust, lack of respect, hostile interactions and the breakdown of parent-teacher relationships as significant issues that need attention.
Some tied this to the tone of Alberta politics — rhetoric from certain politicians, a lack of respect for teachers leading up to the strike, and social media influencers “rage baiting” and saying teachers groom kids or try to brainwash them into woke or left-wing thinking.
Others tied this to changes in parenting and/or a societal decrease in respect for their expertise in education, saying parents often get defensive rather than collaborate with a teacher when there’s a discipline or other issue that needs correction.
And still others suggest teachers share the blame, saying the culture within the education world itself is playing a role.
One called her colleagues “anti-conservative”; another said she felt she’d be judged as a “terrible person” if she shared her views at school; and several said teachers need to stay away from any discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation, calling it woke.
“Woke has no place in our classrooms. It turns parents off and that is where they are losing respect for the teachers,” wrote one educational assistant from central Alberta in her questionnaire response.
“I live and work in a small community in Alberta and hear comments about our values from community members all the time. … Only one teacher lives in the community. They are driving from the city so they do not hear parents.”
So what is going on?
Analyst says problem is systemic, widespread
Brian Dijkema empathizes with parents who feel disconnected. He’s president of the Cardus Institute, an Ontario-based think tank that brings a faith-based perspective to secular debates.
Djikema pointed to the 1 Million March 4 Children protests in 2023 as evidence that this growing mistrust is a Canada-wide phenomenon. The protests were rooted in a call for parents to have more say in education. In practice, they became a debate between protesters and counter-protesters around trans rights and gender identity.
Dijkema says there are many reasons why parents feel alienated from the school system, and it goes far beyond the populist right and gender debates.
He believes mistrust grew slowly as a result of school systems becoming more centralized over the last decades, with top-down decision-making and a professionalization that leaves parents out.
“In education, what has developed is … a fortress made up of teachers’ colleges, teachers’ unions, the Ministry of Education and large public school boards, and increasingly over time parents have found themselves outside the walls of that fortress,” he said.
“Unless you speak the language, it’s very hard to understand and change it. … If you’ve ever attended a public school board meeting at a large public school, it’s like a city council, right? It’s huge, and a normal mom and dad just don’t have the time to sort of say, ‘Hey, I don’t think we’re teaching math really well.’”
Being on the outside is a recipe for distrust, especially since parents have seen schools employ new teaching techniques — such as discovery math and whole word reading — and then retreat from them, he said.
‘It’s indicative of a deep problem’
Dijkema said gender identity has become one flashpoint, especially for some Muslim and Christian parents, partly because there’s a misalignment with what they teach at home and partly because of a misunderstanding about what is actually taught.
As for teachers no longer choosing to live or feeling comfortable living in the town where they teach, that’s a big red flag that things are not going well, Dijkema said.
“Public schools originally were intended to be community schools, right? So there it would be people in the community teaching and learning with one another. And whenever you have a breakdown of the community, you’re going to have a breakdown in learning.
“I would just say regardless of the ‘why,’ it’s indicative of a deep problem.”
Identifying mistrust at the school district level
We reached out to several school districts to see if growing parental mistrust is an issue they identified.
In southern Alberta, Supt. Tom Hamer of the Palliser School Division said that in his experience, no-trespass orders are rare — maybe one or two a year or less — and they’ve declined since the pandemic.
But his district identified mistrust as an issue in its recent parent townhalls, and Hamer said they’re responding by trying to improve transparency and not using acronyms when speaking.
At Aspen View Public School Division in north central Alberta, communications officer Ross Hunter said staff discuss the issue of mistrust often, especially as something that’s not unique to schools but affecting many public-facing organizations, such as hospitals and retail stores.
But the issue is still limited to a small subsection of parents, he said. When CBC News told him two rural administrators estimated 25 per cent of parents had low trust with the school, he said that’s too high for his area.
Aspen View schools run family lunches, library scavenger hunts and other events to bring parents in.
In Red Deer, the public division recently launched a new dashboard with school-by-school statistics to increase transparency.
In Calgary, public school trustee Nancy Close said since being elected in October, the board has been talking about how to communicate better not just with parents but also the wider community. She was surprised at the amount of mistrust she heard while door-knocking.
“We have seen situations of disconnection and that’s been happening since COVID. We’ve also had a really difficult school year,” she said in an interview. “If people are stressed on both sides … it’s a more difficult conversation.”
“I think a lot of misinformation or mistrust can stem from not having those [open] conversations,” added Laura Hack, chair of the board. “That is part of our role as trustees.”
Educators question why expertise isn’t recognized
We also spoke with other principals in Alberta about this issue.
An assistant principal in central Alberta said she chooses to live 30 minutes away from the town where she teaches and has had to ban parents from the school because they were aggressive.
But in many more cases, the mistrust is quiet — a sense of withdrawal from the school. Relationships are still damaged.
She said pre-pandemic, an angry argument might happen once a year. Now it’s happening five to 10 times a year. With about five per cent of the parents, the situation can be volatile, but she estimates up to a quarter of the parents don’t trust the school.
She spoke on the condition her name and location wasn’t used, worried about further confrontation.
In her view, there’s an element of conspiracy to it. She said there were parents who would not send their kids to school during the pandemic because they genuinely believed teachers would immunize their children without their knowledge or consent.
But the issue is broader than that, she suggested. She has eight years of university education to equip her for the role of principal and wishes parents would value and respect that. For example, when she explains the school’s approach, such as why they don’t hold kids back a grade when they’re failing, she often feels her explanation of those decisions is dismissed.
“I feel like I know what I’m doing and I should be considered — I hate to use the word ‘expert,’ but I’ve had training and lots of experience,” she said. “But parents don’t trust us to make the best educational decisions for their children.”
Soul-searching from the COVID-19 response
Matt Christison was the principal of Calgary’s Robert Thirsk High School and saw the early impacts of the pandemic. He emailed CBC News and volunteered to speak publicly because he’s now retired.
He saw mistrust grow during the pandemic, and believes part of the issue was that schools were too strict with some COVID-19 prevention measures.
These were provincial directives, but Christison says sometimes he and other school staff were too strict when so much was unknown during those early days. And then some directives proved unnecessary, like not allowing classrooms to use paper or wiping groceries with Lysol.
That contributed to mistrust. But it had been growing even earlier.
He said sometimes mistrust grows when a school doesn’t meet expectations — because a parent who grew up overseas is used to a very different teaching method back home, or because a parent sees their child needs help and a busy teacher doesn’t have the time or capacity to offer what they’re hoping for.
Teachers are the face of that failure, even if it’s not their fault. And as a school principal, he said he had less ability to make exceptions or change rules later in his career, as authority was centralized in the main office.
Political mistrust is a factor, too. He says in the 2010s, he started hearing more from parents upset about immigration, the use of pronouns, a shift away from what some called “fundamental Christian values,” and the new effort to acknowledge Indigenous connection with the land as part of truth and reconciliation efforts.
As that kind of pushback grew, Christison said his teachers started to have more discussions about class assignments ahead of time.
If something was sensitive, for example assigning students to listen to a podcast about colonization from a more left-leaning perspective, then teachers would work hard to find an equally compelling alternative assignment that touched on the same themes. That gave students choice. In this case, it could be reflecting on a period of historical oppression in one’s own family or ethnic community’s history.
A backdrop of funding cuts
The other backdrop to this growth in mistrust is funding and classroom complexity.
Even without adjusting for inflation, Alberta’s per student funding has fallen since 2015. Last year, it was either the lowest or among the lowest in Canada, depending on how it’s measured.
At the same time, classrooms have more English language learners and students with complex needs.
It’s something the province is starting to address with a seven-per-cent funding increase in the recently announced budget.
The small town assistant principal we quoted at the top of this piece said in his view, the distrust could be fixed with proper funding.
“That sounds crass, but it isn’t. No parent complains about a teacher when their student feels cared for and successful. So good instruction solves all of this,” he said.
“When you ask what would support us, well, more teachers.”
But since the teachers’ strike ended with a back-to-work order in October, he and his wife have lost hope that things will improve.
She has already started to apply for jobs outside Alberta.
What do you think about our reporting on Alberta schools? What would you like to see us report on next? Send an email to ask@cbc.ca.
