THUNDER BAY - Now that two of the city’s largest school boards know how many students will be returning to the classroom, the hard work continues to determine just what the school year will look like, and so far it includes a staggered start and potential smaller class sizes, but the fine details are still being worked out.
The Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board will see 895 students of the 7,500 registered learning from home this academic year, with 240 in secondary and more than 600 in elementary.
In the Lakehead Public School Board, 825 elementary students will be learning from home and 350 secondary students.
Both boards are classified as non-designated, meaning students will be returning five days a week with normal class sizes. With several hundred students choosing not to return to the classroom, it will mean smaller classes sizes, but it will differ between both boards.
“We are looking at those numbers as we speak and we are looking at where the pressure points are in our system and we will have to look at what space we have in our schools to look at reducing those numbers,” said Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board director of education, Pino Tassone.
“We are aware of some pressure points, so we will probably be looking at splitting those classes or moving them around in order to reduce the numbers. That will be a priority for us to reduce those numbers in areas we have pressure points.”
Tassone added there could be some classes with 15 or fewer students, as well as using additional classrooms to allow for more physical distancing.
“We have to look at those pieces as well whether we will have to hire additional staff,” he said. “We recognize that and we will do that where needed.”
The Lakehead Public School Board has a higher enrollment of more than 13,000 students, and according to AJ Keene, superintendent of education, class sizes will still be closer to normal levels.
“We are investing money to try and reduce our numbers as much as possible, particularly in JK and Grade 3, because those are the children who are not required to have a mask, so we want to keep those numbers as small as possible,” he said.
The Ministry of Education is permitting school boards to access reserve funds, but Keene said the public board did not receive enough additional funding to hire many more teachers.
“There is a ceiling on what we can tap into,” he said. “So there will be some hiring to offset some of our kindergarten class sizes, but we don’t know the exact number at this point.”
But Keene said the school board is still looking at ways of ensuring there is adequate physical distancing inside schools once the school year begins.
“We’ve inventoried all of our schools. All of our schools have at least one empty classroom,” he said. “In cases where we are injecting another teacher to reduce class sizes, we do have the space to accommodate that.”
Keene added between 30 and 40 teachers are also opting not to return to the classroom due to health concerns. With a virtual school having to be set up to accommodate students learning from home, approximately 31 to 34 teachers will be needed for instruction, which means some might have to be reassigned.
In the Catholic board, approximately 12 per cent of teaching staff will be offering online at-home learning.
It was also announced on Thursday that both the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board and the Lakehead School Board will be staggering the start of the school year, with different grades returning on different days after the Labour Day weekend.
“We are starting on a different day to allow our staff to prepare and have a chance to look at their environments and adapt to them,” Tassone said.
“We have a tough two weeks ahead and we have a lot of challenges as we move forward, but we hope we are ready for the staggered start.”
“That’s in order to make sure we have all of our protocols in place, that we have time to train the kids,” Keene said.
“If you have a full school of children and you are trying to teach new routines, new protocols, it makes it difficult. But having kids come in by grade at a time, it just gives us a little more space and time to do things more properly.”
For more information on the start of the school year, including dates in the staggered start, visit the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board and Lakehead Public School Board websites.
