The 'just unbelievable' problems in Alberta classrooms

Demetrios Nicolaides is the father of five elementary-age daughters, but the tumult in his life doesn’t end there.

He is Alberta’s very busy minister of education and childcare, working hard to build consensus with deeply frustrated educators in the aftermath of a gnarly teachers strike. He’s also a prime target in a well-orchestrated plan to recall a growing number of United Conservative Party (UCP) MLAs, which may not be unrelated.

Perhaps the only PhD inside Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet and caucus, Nicolaides is the standard-bearer for academically sound and evidence-based approaches to bridging deep political divides. His current challenge is to ensure complexity and aggression are addressed in K-12 classrooms, aggravated by swelling class sizes.

“We can’t ask our teachers to be interpreters, mental health experts, clinical professionals and teachers, all at the same time,” declares Nicolaides. Few would disagree.

Nicolaides says his government is “fully in alignment with what teachers are asking for… and fully in alignment with what the challenges are.”

Growing incidents of violence in the classroom have his full attention. “I’ve heard firsthand from teachers,” he reports, “stories that are just unbelievable, to be quite frank, that need to be addressed.

“One stark indicator of the growing severity of behavioural challenges is the rise in ‘room clears’ — a practice where an entire class is evacuated to ensure safety due to a student’s behaviour,” explains a November 2025 report to the minister from education leaders.

The report also states, “incidents of emotional and behavioural dysregulation are becoming increasingly common in schools, often manifesting as physical aggression — including fighting, hitting, biting, hair-pulling — and in the most extreme cases, the presence of weapons.”

Nicolaides laments the fast growth in class sizes propelled by a two-year population surge: “That needs to be addressed, no question.”

“In 2023, we saw the largest increase in our population, ever, in the history of this province,” the minister reports. That’s going to put immense pressure on our school divisions and on our teachers, he adds, “that’s why we’re calling for more responsible immigration and a provincial seat at the table when it comes to immigration.

“In 2022, the Calgary Board of Education was planning to wind down 14,000 student spaces, equivalent to 22 schools, due to lacklustre enrolment projection,” Nicolaides elaborates. “Fast forward one short year to 2023, and we’re hit with the highest ever level of population increase our province has seen.”

To be clear, Nicolaides — born and raised in Calgary to parents who emigrated from Cyprus in the ‘70s — is not blaming immigrants.

“There’s a consensus across the country that immigration needs to be managed more sustainably,” he asserts. “NDP B.C. Premier Eby has called for that … and I would argue further, even former prime minister Justin Trudeau in the spring of ’24 said they needed to be a little bit more diligent about managing immigration.”

The UCP government is willing to throw money at these issues — promising 3,000 additional teachers by 2028, and $400 million over three years to deal with classroom complexity. Early in December, the government announced a $69-million investment over three years into a mental health and well-being grant.

But, as the minister makes clear, strategies need to be evidence-based. That means tabling legislation to mandate math and reading assessments for K-Grade 3, to enable early detection of learning difficulties and enable targeted intervention. That also means deepening the conversation on classroom sizes.

“I would say, class sizes larger than 30 are too big,” the minister states, “that’s why I have commissioned and asked our school divisions to provide us with detailed classroom numbers so we can get an exact understanding of where are the outliers.”

Effective next month, class sizes will be publicly disclosed, but the minister remains a stickler for rational decision-making. Are we talking about reducing class size to improve academic performance, he asks, or are we talking about reducing class size to make classrooms more manageable for teachers, given the complexity?

Nicolaides acknowledges the frustration over the government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to legislate striking teachers back to work; and as education minister, he’s the obvious whipping boy for the Alberta Teachers’ Association.

But one group with whom he may not find consensus are those set on using recall legislation to force byelections for the 44 UCP MLAs (starting with Nicolaides) who voted to use the notwithstanding clause against teachers.

In 2019, when Nicolaides was first elected MLA, then-premier Jason Kenney campaigned on the idea of recall, stating at the time, “it should be for serious and egregious breaches of trust,” and that’s the sentiment Nicolaides says he believes in. “But I think what’s happening here,” he continues, in a recall campaign targeting 44 UCP MLAs (including the premier), “is an attempt to completely upset stable governance.

“I’m not sure who’s behind the Total Recall initiative,” says the minister, “but it seems to be quite coordinated.” Public service unions decry responsibility for weaponizing Alberta’s recall legislation, but a look at Operation Total Recall’s website, plus appeals for support by union leaders, lead one to conclude organizational effort is being dedicated to this province-wide call to action.

“Every individual MLA in a constituency has a relationship with their voters, their neighbours and constituents, and it’s the integrity of that relationship that has to be the question when a recall is brought forward,” Nicolaides says, “not an opportunity for outside interests to try and influence things.”

The UCP government has decided it will not amend recall legislation to set higher thresholds or clearer rules. Nicolaides says he doesn’t anticipate those petitioning for a byelection in his constituency will gather significant support. In Calgary-Bow constituency, the threshold for a successful recall petition is 16,006 verified signatures of constituents (that’s 60 per cent of the votes cast in the constituency in the 2023 provincial election), by Jan. 21.

Nicolaides has other plans for late January: fingers crossed, he plans to be at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, as part of a campaign to raise awareness and funds for domestic violence prevention in Alberta, in honour of his sister who was killed by her ex-husband nearly two years ago.

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