A number of disgruntled teachers and parents have contacted The Eagle In the wake of recent stories outlining the lack of resources available to help students in Rocky View Schools (RVS) with substandard math and literacy skills, most of them reluctant or unwilling to reveal their names for follow up stories out of fear of repercussions.
But Belinda Cartwright, a recently resigned middle school and high school teacher (most recently at Bert Church High School), had no such qualms.
She resigned in July 2023 after 25 years as a teacher, citing burnout after witnessing first hand, and stating how she no longer had the will to fight the lack of accountability inherent in the administration and the culture of entitlement, she says, prevented her from providing the quality of education she had dreamt of providing since she was a little girl.
She contacted The Eagle after reading recent stories outlining the frustration experienced by Ashley Tisdale in Cochrane, who was moved to go to the media after learning her eight-year-old daughter was “silently crying” regularly in class, as she fell further and further behind class mates in math skills, with no hope of improvement in sight.
A fellow Airdrie teacher contacted Cartwright to alert her to The Eagle stories and suggested she could maybe speak up as well, since they couldn’t.
“They don’t want to burn their bridges with Rocky View (Schools) so they asked if I would call you,” she said. “And I said 'absolutely,' because I have no skin in the game.”
Things like accountability and taking responsibility for poor test results were areas of concern before COVID, but since then, things have just gotten worse.
“It’s unsustainable the way it’s being run, and it’s the adults (school administrators and parents) that are the reason I left.”
Cartwright cited an example of a student who wasn’t doing the work, wasn’t even attending class. Repeated attempts to contact the parents were unsuccessful, and when the failing grade was sent, the parents sent an angry email asking her how she could fail their child.
“At one point in the semester that student had (a grade of) one per cent. The student was never there.”
She described another incident as typical of what’s gone wrong at RVS.
After being given extra time to complete assignments, a student still didn’t complete the work. He asked to go to the washroom one day, but instead went to the vice-principal to complain about not getting the help he needed.
Before he returned to her class, Cartwright received an email from the vice-principal, directing her to just “please find only the most important assignments for this student, because we’re trying to get them graduated,” she said.
“The constant pandering from administration and parents with absolutely zero standards, made me crazy,” Cartwright said.
She said she never wanted to fail students , but wished there had at least been some communication between administration and her about maybe developing a strategy for what was needed to help students keep up. Instead, she said, administrators just aped what the parents wanted – to pass their kid.
She said those kinds of discussions ideally would contain an element of describing what the consequences were for doing the work, and not doing the work.
“But there was none of that,” she said.
That student ended up graduating.
“It’s a shame," she said. "At one time Rocky View was looked at as one of the most innovative school divisions in Alberta. We were looked to as a beacon. But they just don’t want to listen to what’s happening in the trenches.”
Cartwright said resigning like she did was an unfortunate end to a dream of being a teacher that goes back to when she was a little girl.
“Always. I could have told you that in elementary school there was never anything else I wanted to do. I always wanted to be a teacher.”
Cartwright said she keeps in touch with former colleagues still teaching in RVS, and that the conditions she described are representative of other schools as well.
RVS did not respond to The Eagle's request for an interview.
