Priority: School Capacity Calculation

The current calculation speaks only to the overall square meters and number of students and does not accommodate break-out spaces and other rooms that cannot be used as homerooms.
Larger spaces, such as an expanded gym, are a disadvantage to junior and high school usage calculations.
Some schools seem crowded but are calculated under-capacity. Some schools are not crowded, but capacity is high.
School population calculation does not include:
- Digital school leadership spaces
- Digital school teaching spaces
- Junior kindergarten students
Capital funding suffers because of this outdated model though costs increase in terms of utilities and usage.
What a change could accomplish:
- Allow school boards to maintain facilities more optimally.
- Provide equity of opportunity for school-based services for rural communities.

The 2023 Alberta Education mandate letter from Premier Smith advises:
- Ensuring Alberta's educational funding model continues to promote parental choice in education. This includes ensuring that Alberta's public, separate, francophone, charter, independent (private) schools and early childhood services operators and home education systems are all appropriately funded to ensure the highest educational outcomes for students.
- Working to significantly increase the number of schools in the communities of greatest need.
Modernize the calculation to include spaces dedicated to online leadership, teaching, and in-person engagement with remote students.
Modernize the calculation to include spaces for early learning opportunities (Junior Kindergarten) that overall enhance the success of students.
Adjust the calculation to improve the correlation between capacity and utilization.