Fall restructuring has come and gone at the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board and they've managed to keep class sizes lean.
Restructuring happens every year at schools. Once students are in school, administrators take a closer look at class sizes and may rearrange some students to create the most efficient configurations of students, space and teacher resources.
This year proved to be a challenge due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“This whole thing has been such a balancing act, of trying to accommodate the wishes and needs of our families and students while balancing the obligations to the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour and the health unit,” said Pauline Stevenson, spokesperson for the Catholic board.
Stevenson said the Catholic board was able to use some of the funding provided by the province to hire 16 new teachers. Overall, the Catholic board has been promised $5.1 million in provincial funding to pay for back-to-school safety measures.
“It has resulted in, on average, smaller class sizes compared to last year,” she said. “These additional staff will be used to keep our face-to-face class sizes as low as possible."
According to Stevenson, in primary grades board-wide, the class size average is 20 students.
At the kindergarten level as well as junior intermediate (Grades 4 to 8), average class sizes sit at 24. Last year, the same grades had 26 students on average.
The Simcoe County District School Board were to be restructured as of Sept. 29, however did not yet have data available at the time of publication. A board official indicated a report will be coming to trustees on Oct. 7 with their restructuring outcomes.
The presidents of the two Catholic teachers unions, Kent MacDonald and Allyn Janicki, were contacted for this story but did not return a request for comment by publication time.
