Manny Figueiredo is worried about the future.

The public school board's director of education is "very concerned" about how the provincial increase in the average high school class size to 28 students from 22 over four years will affect Hamilton.

This year, class sizes have been pushed to the maximum and some classes are "stacked," with students from different grades and streams in the same class, Figueiredo said in a recent interview. The board's secondary class size increased by an average of 2.6 students this fall to 22.4 from 19.8.

Since classes were reorganized in September, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has 242 high school classes with 30 or more students in the first semester of the school year. That represents about 8.5 per cent of all HWDSB secondary classes.

While this is not atypical for the board, what's different this year is the 173 high school course sections they cancelled due to declining enrolment, provincial funding changes and the provincewide average class size increase, Figueiredo said.

The cap for some courses, like tech, is lower because of space, equipment and safety issues, he said. In Hamilton, that number is 21 students with a 10 per cent flexible factor. The local maximum is 15 students for locally developed and essential courses, 18 for workplace courses and 18 for vocational classes.

If the province's class size average is 28 three years from now, Figueiredo worries the board will be packing students into university and college courses, which have a local cap of 29 students plus 10 per cent flex, bringing the maximum to 32, or not offering some courses to maintain the average.

"Both ways, I don't think it's good for quality of programming and kids," he said. He fears some "pathways" might be cut off, especially for students in tech and workplace courses. "That's my greatest worry moving forward for students."

Figueiredo worries about how increased class sizes will affect Hamilton's most vulnerable students, from those with special needs to newcomers and English-language learners.

"I believe these class sizes actually allow us to program from an equity perspective and to honour the diversity of our students," he said.

Daryl Jerome, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, District 21, Hamilton-Wentworth, has said packed classes have left students with limited — if any — wiggle room to change courses.

The increase in "stacked" classes — one school has five classes made up of four separate course codes — is "not normal by any stretch of the imagination," and makes it tough for teachers required to teach different material to separate groups in the same class, he said last month, noting it can also be challenging for students, who may be at varying skill levels.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce has said he is willing to listen to "innovative" proposals from the unions at the bargaining table on how to offset larger class sizes that fall within the government's "fiscal realities."

Last month, a report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario said there will be 10,000 fewer teaching positions across the province over the next five years as the Ford government boosts class sizes.

The report also says the province's $1.6-billion attrition fund is more than enough to stave off teacher layoffs as bigger classes are phased in by not replacing teachers who retire or resign.

These changes to education come as the government bargains with teachers and education workers for new contracts.

The union representing Ontario's public high school teachers said Tuesday it will hold strike votes over the next month as talks with the provincial government are going nowhere.

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—With files from The Toronto Star and The Canadian Press

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