‘None of the other kids feel safe.’ Hundreds of elementary school students forced into oversubscribed classes in TDSB

As cases across Ontario, hundreds of elementary students across the Toronto District School Board have been forced into oversubscribed classes where they may be so close to their peers, they feel unsafe.

When Anjula Gogia’s 12-year-old daughter, a Grade 7 student at Winona Drive Senior Public School, came home from class last week, she told her mom she and her classmates could not maintain a proper physical distance while studying.

“My daughter is safer going into a liquor store or a grocery store than she is going into her own classroom every day,” Gogia said. “She doesn’t feel safe. None of the other kids feel safe. What happens if a kid tests positive?”

Less than two months after the Toronto board approved a plan to reduce class sizes in kindergarten to Grade 8, nearly 4 per cent of its roughly 7,600 classes, both in-person and virtual, exceed the size limits promised at the start of the year, according to TDSB data released last week.

That amounts to roughly 300 classes, both in-person and virtual, that have too many students, the data show, some with as many as five extra kids.

As well, roughly 40 of these oversubscribed classes are located in communities Toronto Public Health identified as high risk for spreading the coronavirus. Fifteen “high priority” kindergarten classes have more than the targeted 20-student limit. One virtual classroom in Grades 4 through 8 has 38 students. The cap is 35.

TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird said the vast majority of oversized classes only have one extra student. As part of its commitment to keeping kids safe this year, Bird said the board spent $30 million of its reserves to reduce class sizes, approving 20-student class size limits for in-person kindergarten and Grades 1 to 3.

Most other classes were capped at 27 students. Most virtual classes have been capped at 35 students.

“From the beginning we did say that it was a possibility that one or two students may be over that targeted class size limit,” he said.

The new, unexpected bigger class sizes are a direct result of a massive reorganization of elementary school teachers and students earlier this month to accommodate an overwhelming demand for virtual learning. Nearly 10,000 students switched learning modes in October with close to 8,000 kids leaving brick and mortar classrooms for online school.　

Oversized classes are just one more issue the TDSB has been forced to grapple with since the start of the school year. The board is scrambling to deal with a shortage of tech devices and now a budget shortfall of roughly $41 million.

The TDSB expected about 5,500 more students than are enrolled this year. That figure includes roughly 4,700 elementary school students, including 2,000 kids who were expected to enter kindergarten.

Jacob Beck, 43, was angry when he found out a couple of weeks ago that his son’s 16-person class at McMurrich Junior Public School near Oakwood Avenue and St. Clair Avenue West would swell to 22 students, two students over the 20-kid limit.

It was a shock to Beck and his 6-year-old son Emil because earlier that same week the school board sent out an email reiterating its promise to keep class sizes within the reduced caps. The email, in fact, uses the words “will not exceed” in bold and underlined font. It felt like insult added to injury the week Emil’s class grew because that’s when the school reported a positive case of in another Grade 1 classroom.　

“The whole point is that having the bigger classes increases the risk of contracting the coronavirus,” he said. “The fact that my son has not come down with coronavirus yet does not mean the risk is any lower.”

That’s why Gogia was furious when she heard about her daughter’s class. To express her frustration, she wrote letters to Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce.

In the meantime, it seems her daughter’s class may have shed a couple of students because, she said, parents were unhappy. Gogia said she appreciates how hard teachers and principals are working to keep her kids safe and learning properly, and that the provincial government should step up to give schools the resources they need to reduce class sizes once again.

In a statement emailed to the Star on Tuesday, Minister of Education spokesperson Caitlin Clark did not address the oversized elementary schools specifically but said the government’s plan to “safely reopen schools is fully endorsed by the Chief Medical Officer of Health and it includes every layer of prevention — including the hiring of over 1,000 new custodians to clean schools, over 2,000 educators to enhance distancing, and over 600 new public health nurses to support our school communities. This is supported by our government’s $1.3 billion investment to keep students safe.”　

Michele Henry is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star, writing health and education stories. Follow her on Twitter: