The Rocky View Schools (RVS) Board of Trustees is calling out Airdrie-Cochrane candidate Peter Guthrie for comments he made during a candidates forum regarding school division funding – statements the public school division argue were "inaccurate" but that the candidate doubled down on in response.
At their board meeting last Thursday, RVS trustees approved sending the letter to Guthrie, the UCP candidate and incumbent for the riding. The letter, attributed to RVS Board Chair and Ward 4 Trustee Norma Lang, was also distributed to local media outlets as a press release on Friday.
"The Rocky View Schools (RVS) Board of Trustees believes it is important to publicly clarify inaccurate information recently stated by Mr. Peter Guthrie about our school division as it relates to funding for school projects," the letter began.
"On two recent occasions, Mr. Guthrie accused the RVS board and administration of lying to parents about the capital approvals received from the provincial government in Budget 2023."
RVS was alluding to comments Guthrie made during last week's Cochrane Chamber of Commerce Candidates Forum. During the forum, he suggested RVS misled parents by claiming the division had not received any funding for future school build projects after the province released its most recent capital budget.
Lang's letter called on Guthrie to retract and clarify his statements.
"RVS firmly stands by the statement shared with our families on March 9, 2023, that 'the Alberta government did not include our division in the school projects approved for 2023 construction funding,'" the RVS letter stated.
"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."
Guthrie responded to the letter via his Facebook page on May 26, re-stating his comments that "misinformation" was emailed out to parents by RVS that made "erroneous claims" the division did not receive any of their requests from the government in the 2023 budget.
"The fact of the matter is RVS received their top four asks (two schools in Airdrie, one in Chestermere and one in Cochrane) in addition to 10 of 19 portables awarded in the entire province," Guthrie wrote. "This was a big win for our constituency and our education community.
"Parents that reached out to my office for an explanation of the emailed information regarding awarded resources were not pleased when they found out their Superintendent Greg Luterbach and Board Chair Norma Lang were not forthcoming with all available and accurate information. Now that the inaccuracies of the RVS communication have been shown, they should take responsibility for the misleading correspondence to parents."
Guthrie concluded his response by accusing RVS of "political grandstanding," and said the division should "refocus their attention in the classroom, where it should be."
