Ontario’s education system has been plunged into “chaos and confusion” days before school resumes after Premier Doug Ford’s government tried to go back to the drawing board on increasing class sizes to save $250 million in the coming year.Education Minister Stephen Lecce said Thursday he’s “open” to suggestions from school boards and teachers’ unions to stop average class sizes from rising to 28 students over the next four years — from 22 in the last school year — insisting they will only increase marginally next month in Grades 4 and above.“We should not be dogmatic about this,” Lecce told reporters in Scarborough, calling for “innovative ideas” as the government negotiates new contracts with teacher unions to replace ones that expire at the end of August.He cautioned that any efforts to offset larger class sizes must acknowledge the Progressive Conservative government’s “fiscal realities” as it strives to eliminate annual deficits, and maintained it is time to “debunk some of these narratives out there” that class sizes are rising dramatically, with negative impacts on students.But education unions and school boards were left scratching their heads, given that teachers have already been laid off and course offerings pared for the coming school year after the changes were announced in March and confirmed when the province released the school funding formula last spring. “This is the basis on which school boards have been planning for this year, resulting in courses and programs being cancelled, supports being lost, and teachers’ and education workers’ jobs being eliminated,” said Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.“If the government was planning a different course of action, they could have told Ontarians about it months ago. Instead, they have been content to allow chaos a ...
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