Open Up School Board Meetings

Open Up School Board Meetings

School boards make decisions that directly affect our children, our families, and our communities.

From curriculum and school policies to budgeting and staffing, these decisions deserve public scrutiny.

Yet across Alberta, many school boards make it unnecessarily difficult for parents to know what is happening at their meetings.

Most parents work during the day and have many other responsibilities, which makes attending board meetings in person unrealistic.

In theory, parents can rely on meeting records and minutes to stay informed - but in practice, the publishing of these documents is often delayed, and they are never a complete record of what happened.

Some school boards do now livestream video of their meetings online, which is a nice modern improvement.

But the majority of school boards do not, leaving parents dependent on summaries to understand what issues were discussed, what questions were asked, and how trustees represented their interests.

Even among the small number of boards that do live video of their meetings, access remains inconsistent. 

In at least one Alberta school division, they live-stream their meetings, but make the video unavailable as soon as it’s finished.

Yes, you read that right - it’s not even that they don’t record the meeting, they do - but they actively take the video down once the meeting is over, because they don’t want a record of their meeting available to watch anywhere after the fact.

Watching a meeting live during working hours is not feasible for most parents, so going out of their way to take down video that is already available seems deeply cynical.

We found out about this odd case because the trustees of that board recently debated whether to keep recordings permanently accessible online.

Ultimately, they voted against letting parents watch the recordings, citing concerns regarding “cost, culture, and potential misuse”.

Taken together, these practices reveal a broader pattern: school boards are placing unnecessary barriers between parents and the decisions being made about their children’s education.

Public meetings are public for a reason. 

Parents should not have to take time off work, file formal access requests, or rely on delayed summaries simply to understand what occurred in meetings that are, in principle, open to everyone. 

Transparency should not depend on the preferences or culture of individual boards.

The provincial government has the authority to set clear, province-wide standards for openness and accountability in public education governance. 

Parents deserve consistent, timely access to information about how decisions are made.

That’s why the Alberta Parents’ Union is calling on the Government of Alberta to establish clear requirements for public access to school board proceedings, including timely posting of meeting minutes and the consistent availability of meeting recordings.

It’s 2026.

It’s time for all school board meetings to be recorded and available on demand to parents who want to know what’s being done on their behalf by their representatives, without barriers, excuses, or gatekeeping.

If you believe parents have a right to understand how decisions about their children’s education are made, please sign this petition and urge the Province to ensure meaningful transparency across all Alberta school boards.

Call on the Province to Open Up School Board Meetings: