The following letter was sent to Mr. Peter Guthrie, incumbent candidate for Airdrie-Cochrane:

Dear Mr. Guthrie,

I am writing to you today on behalf of the Rocky View Schools (RVS) Board of Trustees to express our concerns with the misinformation and accusations you shared recently about our school division as it relates to school projects in Budget 2023.

On two recent occasions (Airdrie Echo article published May 19th and Town of Cochrane Chamber’s 2023 Candidate Forum for the Provincial Election) that we are aware of, you stated that the RVS Board and administration “outright lied by e-mailing parents and telling them that they received zero funding for schools in this last budget.”

Mr. Guthrie, the Board has been honest, factual and consistent with the information we shared about the status of our school capital plan requests.

The letter sent to all RVS families’ email addresses and posted on our website March 9, 2023, is one of many examples of our transparency with parents and the public about this important matter. You will see we stated that “the Alberta government did not include our division in the school projects approved for 2023 construction funding.” We acknowledged in the same letter that RVS was granted design funding and preliminary planning funding for a total of four projects. Your accusation that we lied to parents is not true. We were factual in our communication that we received no construction funding in Budget 2023 for these four projects.

The full letter to parents remains available on our website as is the Minister’s response.

Further to this, RVS outlines the funding approved from government on page 15 of our 2024-2027 Capital Plan which lists the Alberta Government Approved Projects March 2023 & Capital Priority List. This plan is heavily circulated to stakeholders, shared with media and available on our website. 

Mr. Guthrie, we request that you retract and clarify that RVS did not lie to parents as there was no construction funding approvals for any of these four projects received for RVS in Budget 2023.

The Board believes to uphold the trust of our families, staff, students and stakeholders it is important that we provide clarification. RVS will send a media advisory on May 26, 2023, with this information.

We believe open dialogue and information sharing are key to our ability to deliver on our commitment to our 28,000 students, 3,000 staff and thousands of parents and guardians. As we have throughout our advocacy efforts for space for students, we welcome further conversation and questions you may have. 

Sincerely,

Norma Lang
Board Chair

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