Several St. Albert families have criticized Alberta Education's decision to close one of the province's biggest home-school providers last week.
The say that their kids are being punished for someone else's alleged misdeeds.
Alberta Education Minister David Eggen announced Oct. 25 that he had revoked the accreditation and registration of the Trinity Christian School Association due to evidence that it had mishandled provincial funds.
Trinity runs a school for 13 students in Cold Lake and is the supervising school authority for about 3,500 home-school students, or about 30 per cent of this province's home-school population.
About 85 students from 35 families in the St. Albert region are affected by this decision, said Jeremy Nolais, Eggen's chief of staff in an email. These students must now register with another school authority "at their convenience."
Parents not pleased
St. Albert parent Andrea Veldcamp said she had two children affected by the Trinity decision. Like others, she learned of it through a robo-call sent out Oct. 25, and said she was shocked by the news.
"We've had nothing but the best from Wisdom," she said, and their staffers have been very caring and accommodating.
St. Albert parent Laura Veenendaal also got that call, which she said one of her kids mistook for a telemarketer. She realized the truth when the news blew up over social media.
"I just did not know how to approach the situation," she said, as she had four children enrolled with Trinity.
Veenendaal called the province's decision disrespectful, saying that they would not have treated students of a bricks-and-mortar school this way.
"I don't think they're putting kids first."
Alberta Education should have appointed an administrator to take over the school's operations instead of closing it, Veldcamp said.
"Alberta Education is causing these 3,500 students to be the victims as opposed to the party that's supposedly guilty."
Nolais said the School Act does not allow the province to appoint interim administrators for private schools and couldn't even if it did, as Alberta Education had no relationship with Wisdom.
Wisdom did not respond to a request for an interview, but attacked the province's decision on its website, saying that the province had exaggerated clerical errors and had known about its relationship with Trinity for 21 years.
Veenendaal and Veldcamp said they were holding off on switching their kids to a new school as Wisdom has said it will challenge the province's decision. Their kids are continuing their lessons as usual.
"My son's comment was, 'What are they going to do, stop me from learning?'" Veldcamp said.
Eggen's decision came in the wake of a study of the association's records this July.
"The information provided through this review was alarming," Eggen said in a press conference.
The study found that Trinity had turned over 90 per cent, or $5.2 million, of the home-schooling grant it received from the province for 2014/15 over to a third party, Wisdom Home Schooling Society of Alberta, to do its home schooling, and did not adequately account for the use of that money.
The report said Trinity did not address potential conflicts of interest, paid an "exorbitant" amount on office and administration costs (32 per cent of their expenses, compared to less than six for public boards), and did not employ certified teachers as required, the study found. Trinity and Wisdom leased properties to themselves at 10 times market rates and used government funds to pay for liquor, gift cards, babysitting and funerals.
The study also found that Wisdom had withheld about $988,000 in unclaimed funding over three years that should have been released to parents. Instead of handing it over, it required parents to sign a form asking the school to forward it in future years. Anyone who didn't had their cash dropped into general revenue, which was used to run online courses parents then had to pay "tuition" to take, reducing the amount of money they could access.
