All Hands and the Cook
An incremental approach to reducing class sizes in Ontario that acknowledges labour shortages and government rigidity
When public education is collapsing during a pandemic, you dispense with the adjectives. We need to change course. The Ontario government plan is barely functional and community spread threatens to push all learning online. Small class advocates seem to be coming around to the idea that 15 student classes are impossible, and to be honest there is not a lot of visibility into what class sizes and delivery methods the school boards are even capable of sustaining.
We want to see smaller class sizes across the province. We want to see these reductions sooner rather than later. I tend to be pragmatic because I know that it always takes more effort to accomplish something than we first thought it would. So I try to keep things simple. This is just one suggestion for how we could decrease class sizes incrementally.
First let’s acknowledge that the school boards are really driving the bus. The MoE is just the financial middleman. Lecce hasn’t worked his portfolio aggressively and, as he’s shown, he’s more than content with a board-level approach. It turns out I like this approach, too.
School boards barely know what they are doing right now. The fact we have in-class learning is owing to their efforts. Which means they know a little more than the rest of us. Things are dynamic, but their ship can’t just change course and circle back. Whatever delivery models they’re committed to should remain intact. The last thing we need is more unnecessary change; students and parents need stability.
Most school boards have ostensibly locked in their expected delivery models through to the end of the school year. Allowing them to stay the course is the best news they could get right now. They appear to be running up against their staffing capacity, and so that limits the possible range of responses. Smaller classes will happen incrementally across boards, and not by legislative fiat.
To me, the process could look something like this:
The Ontario government has financial commitments to the boards. I’m not worried about school nurses or hand sanitizer. I just want to ensure that every board got their money sent by e-transfer. The password is ‘omgfereal’. Selected major urban centres can expect a tinch more.
School board reserve funds are frozen. No new money from the reserves to hire teachers. I’ll assume on good faith that they hired as many teachers as they reasonably could, and that they didn’t shortchange the principals. Every board can expect an audit. Trust me when I say that every private school lobbyist is lining up to look at reserve fund expenditures.
I have to assume that boards have their supply pools under control. So if they want to reduce classes, they can hire more teachers. Funding for new teachers is done by applying to the MoE for block funding for, say, 10 additional teachers. I’m trying to respect the size differences between boards. I’m not stuck on the number 10. It could be 5 or 20.
School boards can apply for new teacher funding only when their region is in the province’s yellow or red zone. Subsequent changes between zones do not affect prior funding commitments.
The MoE can set the maximum funding amount for additional teacher hiring. Funding should be equitably distributed across boards based on enrollment.
Hire away. I don’t care how the process looks. I don’t even know how many teachers there are because nobody seems to know. That’s why I like my plan. Just put your head down and do what you can, not pushing the boards to the brink of economic ruin and relying instead on federal restart money.
Lecce gets to take a selfie with every new block of teachers that he adds. He would want it this way.
I’m really taking two pragmatic approaches here. I start by forgetting that the reserve funds even exist, and I trust that the boards haven’t aren’t planning on escaping to the Cayman Islands with my tax dollars. I struggled to decipher the budgets before all this, and I’ve got no chance of figuring them out right now. So away with the pesky details. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Put your reserve funds away, I’ll just buy some extra safety with my provincial budget.
I’m also settling on incremental change. I’m fine with that. I want to get ideas into the minds of any person who can possibly do something with them. I’m not going to ask the government to commit to the impossible. I’m just suggesting that if the government wants to save face and appeal to voters with slightly safer schools, there are many available options.