Is a 15 student classroom in Ontario even possible? Was it ever?

Smaller class sizes are certainly safer, but have safe school advocates been asking for the impossible?

I want to pause and take a moment to reflect on the safer school movement in Ontario and, in particular, on the demand from leading education advocates for 15 student classes. Where did this idea of 15 students come from, how has it been used in the popular narrative, and are we able to move forward with our advocacy using this same number?

We can trace the origins of the 15 student class to the idea of social bubbling and cohorting. Simply take a classroom, divide by two, make a cohort, and contain the risk of infectious spread. This idea was enshrined into the Liberal safe school proposal, released late July, just days before the Sick Kids guidance identified smaller class sizes as a “priority strategy.” SickKids did not identify a particular class size limit, but they did recommend 1 meter of social distancing, which roughly correlates to a 15 student classroom.

So the Liberal proposal. I dusted it off and I think this cannot be overstated: It is planned for perfection. Too much has to go right. Namely, all available lapsed and retired teachers are needed to return to work. That hardly seems realistic. And it turns out it wasn’t. There has been a slowly developing shortage of teachers and the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) has just declared a critical teacher shortage as school boards struggle to meet hiring requirements.

The Liberal proposal had tied the hopes of its success to a confidence that lapsed and retired teachers would be willing to return to work en masse. And that is why we don’t really discuss the Liberal plan anymore. It is not even remotely a workable document. But fortunately, a more feasible idea comes along in early August, and it’s also running hard with the idea of 15 student classes.

The Toronto District School board (TDSB) pitches a plan (option 1b) to the Ministry of Education that proposed a shortened school day, which provides the benefit of 15 student K-4 classes, with much reduced hiring requirements. The TDSB plan is rejected by the Ministry on the grounds that it does not offer a full instructional day across all subjects.

Now, we can debate the feasibility of a shortened day, but the reality is that the plan is a non-starter for this government, and even if it were to be implemented, the plan has myriad challenges that would be very difficult to overcome (alignment with parent schedules, teaching hiring and redeployment, student bussing, and the creation of off-site classrooms). The TDSB plan is creative, but the movement in other directions suggests that we have moved too far away from it ever being a viable pivot.

With the Ford government not budging on smaller class sizes, we get left with school boards being told to use their capital reserves to hire teachers--which they are doing with great difficulty. The delays in distance education are indicative of just how difficult it is for a large ship to change course, especially on a foggy night. Given the rapid timelines, frustrating delays and general scarcity of resources, it should come as no surprise that very few people refer to the Liberal plan or the TDSB plan anymore.

Even though the plans for 15 student classes are not feasible, the idea of 15 student classes has become the dominant talking point for safe school advocates. It is the number we have invested all of our emotional energy into, and it remains a prominent issue in the safe school platform. So even as actual class numbers remain high across Ontario and the OCT is declaring a teacher shortage, we still see our NDP government table a motion to cap classes across Ontario at 15 students. How the NDP expects this to be accomplished is never made clear, and their motion is summarily defeated.

My goal today is to push us off of this number, this magical 15. It is an ideal that is neither feasible nor productive, although it certainly sounds wonderful. I suspect that is why we asked for it so many times. I was always suspicious of this number. I have spent my adult life watching labour disputes over class sizes changing by just one or two kids. I never believed that we could get class sizes that small given the systemic weakness of our educational system.

My belief is that we do not have the resources (staff, space, operational, capital) to provide 15 child classes in a full-time environment. The request for 15 student classes didn’t really register with me since I figured that the advocates and mounting public pressure would draw out some meaningful concessions that everyone could be unhappy about. But that never happened.

The 15 number is more than two months old now and the situation on the ground suggests it was likely never achievable, and that it certainly isn’t now. We spent many months demanding what we thought was best, and I know it’s not pleasant to abandon an ideal, but a harsh reality beckons. My daughters are in classes of 26 and 27, respectively. I’m not helping them by asking for the impossible, or by blaming people when I don’t get it.

The Ford government is inflexible, uncreative, and doesn’t take the health and safety of children as seriously as many of us do. I refuse to match that rigidness by digging in on the other side and refusing to move. I am shifting my advocacy to smaller class sizes in high risk areas using earmarked government contingency funds. I want to lower class sizes to whatever number is actually achievable.

I expect that as the situation in schools and the broader communities worsens, we will have an opportunity to steer policy through our advocacy. And if we want our voices to be heard, we had better be sure about our possibilities for political success. There will be more chances to speak to the public and to an increasingly embattled Premier who might find himself more inclined to listen, and so now is the best time to polish up our script.

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Note: We could discuss hybrid, part-time in-class models, but the public health situation would need to deteriorate substantially before we arrive there. That, one hopes, is a discussion we do not soon have.