Calgary public school complexity teams show early gains as union urges balancing support

Calgary public schools have seen early success with provincial support, while a teacher’s advocate said its updated efforts are lacking.

On Oct. 22, the Alberta Government announced the Student Support and Policy Framework, which informs aspects of the complexity teams initiative that it began funding last fall and revised earlier this year.

Details, including new regulations, have not yet been released, but are expected to clarify support staff roles in helping students who need additional attention in several areas, including mental health, academics, and behaviour, through a needs-based approach.

“This framework will help ensure students receive support based on their individual strengths and needs, while providing clearer guidance on how those supports are identified and delivered,” said Demetrios Nicolaides, minister of education and childcare, in a news release.

“It is an important step toward a more consistent and responsive system of student support across Alberta.”

The announcement builds on the Class Size and Complexity Initiative, launched this time last year in response to the teachers’ strike and its grievances, including the growing student population and the intricacies that have followed.

As part of it, the government invested $218 million to deploy complexity teams to hundreds of public, separate, francophone, and charter schools across the province, and $200 million to hire additional junior school teachers to sustain this.

Calgary’s public school board “welcomed” the new framework, saying in an email statement that they “anticipate it will help support a clear and consistent approach to supporting students that should be beneficial.”

Calgary public schools praise early progress

Since it took effect in November 2025, the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) said it has deployed complexity teams at 118 schools, including 140 in elementary schools and 17 in middle and high schools, with more expected this fall.

“We’ve already seen how they have helped to strengthen learning environments and ensure students receive the supports they need to succeed,” an email statement read.

“For some schools, this has led to a reduction in class size; while some are reporting these teams are allowing for more individualized instruction and targeted interventions for students. Overall, teachers and students are benefiting from having additional collaborative partners in the classroom.”

Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), said the province’s funding for complexity teams is certainly a step in the right direction, but multiple wrinkles need ironing out, and the new framework raises questions about its longevity.

“We’ve looked for government to update the rules around inclusion with students for years,” he said.

“We’re hoping that the association and the teachers are included in those consultation phases around regulations and policies to ensure that things that are being developed are actually going to work in Alberta classrooms and that they’re funded for the long term.”

He identified two wrinkles: the late addition of complexity teams for senior schools, announced several months after junior school funding, and the demand the initiative has placed on already under-pressure staff.

High schools top public division’s complexity cases

Currently, CBE high schools have far fewer complexity teams available to senior students than their junior counterparts. At the same time, Alberta Government data show public high schools need them most.

A February survey across the province found senior schools accounted for most complexity cases in Calgary’s public school division last year, with 19 of 22 citing at least one high-severity case.

“A lot of my colleagues who are in high school, they still have all of the complexities that they dealt with last year in their classrooms,” said Schilling.

“They’ve seen no reprieve by [the] government to address those needs.”

He said remedying this discrepancy would require hiring additional teachers and specialized support staff, a crucial step given the pressure the not-yet-filled complexity teams have already put on the system as a whole.

The CBE said that it is managing well amid the added responsibility, explaining that elementary teams include teachers and educational assistants, while Grades 7 to 12 teams have additional behavioural supports, such as psychologists and support workers.

Naming its “robust roster of substitute teachers” and how the board “continually hires throughout the year,” the CBE said that “if schools are unable to fill a substitute position, they will use other certified staff in the building to cover classes or move classes together.”

Shuffling not a long-term solution, says ATA president

While it may not apply to Calgary’s public board, Schilling explained that this shuffling has created a cycle of concern across the province’s education system.

“Some of them have been hired from substitute teacher pools from across the province…and that’s sort of amplified the problem,” he said.

“What we’re hearing, too, with the substitute teacher shortages is that some of the complexity teams, the teachers who are working in schools, are being pulled away from that complexity team in order to fill a substitute teacher absence that day at school.”

Schilling identified the negative pattern this creates both inside and outside the classroom, particularly by reducing teachers’ time to prepare course material and complete administrative duties.

“It affects the other teachers at school as well, so administrators who have different work than teachers throughout the course of the day are not able to do that because they’re covering classes,” he said.

“It just puts strain on the system, and teachers are definitely feeling burnt out from it.”

With the new framework’s regulations expected to be announced, Schilling recommended that the government consider this in future funding decisions related to hiring staff to execute its initiatives.

“Kids are still struggling, schools are still struggling, and it’s been a year since the strike, since the teachers were ordered back,” he said.

“[The] government still has a lot to do here in order to ensure that boards have the funds and the tools to make it for teachers, so that kids can be successful. Kids are caught in the middle of all this, and it’s not fair to them.”

Copyright 2026, LiveWire Calgary. All rights reserved.

Sarah Palmer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, LiveWire Calgary.