Promise to cap class size easier said than done

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This article was published 23/09/2011 (5127 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Capping class sizes for little kids seems to be a universally popular idea, but how many additional teachers and classrooms would it take?

The best guess from the system? Lots.

“We would need significant capital investment — portables, additions and new schools — to have room to reduce class size further,” said Seven Oaks superintendent Brian O’Leary.

Premier Greg Selinger has promised to cap kindergarten to Grade 3 at 20 students, while Tory leader High McFadyen and Liberal leader Jon Gerrard have so far talked only of making 20 kids a goal in elementary school.

Selinger’s campaign says it would require $85 million over five years for capital construction and $20 million to hire an additional 240 teachers.

But none of the major players — the province, trustees, teachers, superintendents — has done any serious number crunching since 2002, when the Nicholls Report concluded that 64.5 per cent of Manitoba classrooms in kindergarten to Grade 6 had more than 20 students.

There were 1,794 classes of 21 to 25, 780 classrooms of 26 to 30, and 79 of more than 30 students, said the report chaired by educator Glenn Nicholls. Enrolment was higher then, and the report covered K-6, but still, really big numbers.

Winnipeg School Division told the Nicholls research team nine years ago that capping at 20 students just for K-3 would require an additional 93 teachers and classrooms.

Space is much more of an issue than finding teachers looking for full-time jobs.

“I don’t think hiring teachers would be a problem. The challenge for us would be where to put them,” said O’Leary, whose division grew more than any other last school year.

When you toss into the school-division mix Hanover, Garden Valley, and Brandon, O’Leary says: The four of us would account for most of the new classrooms.”

While the Manitoba Teachers’ Society has long declared that class size and composition are major priorities, the teachers’ union has not crunched any numbers.

In many schools, getting down to a maximum 20 kids in those four earliest grades could mean finding an extra classroom and hiring an additional teacher.

Some schools have empty classrooms, but others don’t. The problem is already acute in O’Leary’s division. “We’ve got schools in the Maples doing without multipurpose rooms and computer labs and resource rooms,” he said.

Educators say some school spaces may need to be converted into classrooms, some schools may need an addition built or more portables installed. An older grade might have to be shifted to a school with empty desks, to free up space.

There could also be more blended or multi-age classrooms, combining two grades in one classroom to hit the 20-mark, for instance, when there were 32 kids in Grade 2 and 28 kids in Grade 3.

St. James-Assiniboia School Division would need at least nine additional classrooms and teachers, based on the division’s own data showing the number of students and classrooms in its elementary schools.

Louis Riel School Division had 86 blended classrooms of two grades in K-3 last year, including 35 that blended grades 3 and 4 in the same classroom, said superintendent Terry Borys.

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Three K-8 schools in Louis Riel have no classroom space left — Island Lakes, Julie-Riel, and St. Germain — and several others have only a few empty desks.

On the other hand, some LRSD schools such as Marion and Archwood have space for hundreds of additional desks.

Selinger’s campaign says the province would call on the same team of all the major players in the school system that planned uniform report cards, to address composition and the implementation of capping class size.

When Ontario capped class size, O’Leary said, it required that 90 per cent of classes be capped: “That way, you’re not busing the 21st kid.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca