Her school year began with a kindergarten class of 30, which went down to 24 and has now settled at 26.

Like other classrooms across the province, Melissa Bowman’s students are a diverse group — some started school as young as age 3, others are new Canadians learning to speak English, a few struggle with behaviour issues or have special needs.

So when the full-day kindergarten class hit the low of 24, Bowman and the early childhood educator she works alongside “just felt like we could breathe again a little bit.”

“Having the lesser numbers makes a difference — with 30 students in the room, it becomes very difficult to be giving them the amount of time they deserve,” said Bowman, who has taught for 11 years. “We’ve had quite a few kids away sick, and we were around 20 one day, and both my teacher partner and I said ‘this is what this program was written for.’

“We felt we could talk to everybody and our inquiry lessons went well and no one was fighting for our attention and no one was fighting for space.”

The Ontario government has just launched consultations with teacher and support staff unions, as well as trustee associations, to talk about changes to class sizes, full-day kindergarten as well as hiring practices as it works to reduce a $14.5 billion deficit.

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While they are popular among parents, smaller classes are costly — and the hard caps in the early elementary years have caused organizational headaches for boards, says a Ministry of Education document created for the consultations looking to “deliver better value for government investment.”

While teacher unions say they will participate in the talks, they will not accept bigger classes.

“We’re not just sitting there teaching,” added Bowman, a teacher for the past 11 years. “We’re doing mother roles, we’re nurses, we’re dealing with anger management, and more students with special needs are coming to us every year.”

Teachers find it “a stretch to have conversations with every child and we want to make our kids feel important,” Bowman added. “You’ll see the quality of education go down if you keep adding kids.”

Education Minister Lisa Thompson told the Star it’s premature to say what will come of the consultations, but her “overall intent is making sure we have the best learning environment.”

Thompson wants to see how Ontario’s class sizes compare to other provinces, “and honestly my hope is to give people a baseline ... (for discussions about) the path we have to take in Ontario classrooms” amid the province’s fiscal reality.

She would not comment on possible cuts or changes to the two-adult staffing model in full-day kindergarten classrooms.

However, she said she met with the council representing Ontario’s directors of education on Thursday morning, and like those who voted for the PCs in the June election “they themselves know that we have to get our fiscal house in order. In that spirit, everybody needs to be doing their part.”

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In Ontario, kindergarten classes are capped at 29 students, and from Grades 1 to 3 at 20.

In Quebec, junior kindergarten classes can get as big as 17, senior kindergarten 19, and classes grow incrementally bigger as children progress through each grade.

In Alberta, primary classes are an average of 20.2. In Nova Scotia, primary classes are capped at 20 students up to Grade 2, and capped at 25 from Grades 3 to 6.

In British Columbia — where a Supreme Court decision forced the government to bring back smaller class sizes — kindergartens are limited to 20 students, and 22 kids in Grades 1 through 3.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath warned “more students will fall through the cracks if class sizes get any bigger.”

Charles Pascal, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, said “you can’t just look at class size, you have to look at the qualifications of the teachers, training” and ongoing professional development when determining what’s best.

However, the former deputy minister of education said “what you want is class sizes small enough so that educators can adapt to the individual differences of their students” — especially in the primary years.

“That’s where the benefits pay off,” said Pascal, the architect of Ontario’s full-day kindergarten program, who called potential cuts “narrow-minded.”

Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, said with the “diversity of needs we have within those classrooms” there is no way her members would accept larger class sizes.

In secondary schools, funding is determined using a ratio of 22 students for every teacher, but class sizes differ from board to board depending on how staff is allocated.

“If you increase that ratio, you are not going to have staff for those more specialized programs” such as the arts or supports for struggling students, said Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation.

“It certainly causes us concern that they would be considering the idea of altering that ratio.”

He also said “there’s no question that students are better served where they can have individual attention of an educator.”

If class sizes are boosted, he added, that could mean layoffs in some boards.