Renfrew board calls increase harmful

The public school board in Renfrew County says the province’s plan to increase class sizes and make e-learning mandatory in high schools will hurt the quality of education students receive in the predominantly rural area.

Larger class sizes will make it difficult for the board to offer a variety of courses, said Renfrew County District School Board chair Susan Humphries in a letter to Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson.

She also raised the spectre of school closures, saying the change will create pressure to consolidate students at larger schools.

The previous Liberal government put a moratorium on school closures after facing intense criticism from parents, people in rural communities — and the Conservative party, then in opposition.

The move to larger class sizes may have the “unintended consequence of accelerating review of school sites in certain small, rural communities,” said Humphries’ letter. “This is something we have worked very hard to avoid as we understand and appreciate the importance and value rural constituents place on their neighbourhood schools.”

The province plans to increase the average class size in high schools to 28 from 22. Online courses will have an average size of 35. In grades 4 to 8, classes will increase by about one student to an average of 24.5.

Larger classes may seem simple to implement, but the implications for a rural school board are “far reaching,” said the letter.

Because some courses, such as auto mechanics and woodworking, must remain smaller for safety reasons, other class sizes would have to be much larger than 28 in order to maintain the average, the letter points out.

At schools where there is a small student population, larger classes would be difficult to accommodate, said Humphries in an interview.