Catholic school board will reduce elementary school class sizes

The Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board (HWCDSB) has introduced a plan to reduce class sizes for kindergarteners and students in Grades 4 to 8 in time for the beginning of the school year.

Pat Daly, chair of the HWCDSB, told The Spectator that the board is ready to spend $3.5 million to bring kindergarten class sizes down from roughly 23 students per class to 19 or 20, and Grades 4 to 8 from roughly 24 to 25 students per class to 22 to 23 students.

The decision follows an announcement from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) earlier this week to reduce class sizes to the tune of $10.4 million.

Both school boards chose not to reduce class sizes for Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 3 because those classes are already capped at 20 students.

Daly said the board will need to find between 50 and 55 new classrooms, as well as hire 50 additional teachers and 15 additional kindergarten supervisors to reduce the class sizes.

Already, the board has made it mandatory for students to wear masks at school and on buses, and has decided to stagger elementary school start times to allow teachers the opportunity to provide safety protocol and guidance to smaller cohorts of students before the semester begins.

The plans to reduce class sizes are modelled on the board's enrolment numbers, which show that about 85 per cent of students will return to class in-person while the rest will learn from home, Daly said.

The decision also comes after weeks of mounting pressure from parents and staff over fears of overcrowded classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While parents and education advocates have called for 15 students per class, the funding available to school boards has largely allowed them to reduce class sizes in the range of 20 students per class.

Earlier this week, the public board said it could reduce kindergarten class sizes to 22 students per class and Grades 4 to 8 down to 24 students per class.

Daly said the Catholic board will be using a mix of provincial funding and its own reserve funds to pay for the reduced class sizes.

The board will access between $2.5 million and $3 million from its reserve fund, Daly said.

Using boards' reserve funds has been a point of contention for trustees since Ontario's Ministry of Education announced it would unlock up to $496 million from board reserve funds earlier in August.

In a previous interview with The Spectator, Daly said he was deeply concerned" by the province's decision to offload responsibility for covering class size expenses onto the boards.

School boards have worked very, very hard over many years to establish reserves in support of priorities in the best interest of students. This will take away from that," Daly said.

We believe the responsibility of schools reopening rests with the provincial government to fund. This takes away resources that would've been used for students in other ways."

The Catholic board has roughly $29.7 million stashed in its reserve fund - $9.7 million of which is not already earmarked by the board.

At a news conference on Tuesday, public board chair Alex Johnstone justified the use of reserve funds for class sizes.

Reserve funds are typically saved for rainy days, and I can definitively tell you now that the flood has arrived," Johnstone told reporters.

Jacob Lorinc's reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows him to report on stories about education.