One week following reports of overcrowding at one Whitby school, parents and teachers at another Durham Region elementary school are dealing with children learning in scattered, makeshift classrooms.
Staff and parents at Vincent Massey Public School in Oshawa are concerned after the school ballooned from 600 students to almost 800 this year. A staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, said multiple classes now occupy the library and staff room because of a lack of space.
“[Teachers] are finding it really difficult, talking over the other class of the other students working. They’re having trouble planning… such as read-alouds. They’re not able to read aloud to the students, which the kids really enjoy,” said the staff member.
Teachers can’t do their job effectively in that space.”
It’s created a domino effect within the school as well, they said.
“The actual library program is suffering … a lot of the students really benefit from having hard copies of books. And it’s been a disaster trying to find resources,” the staff member said.
“The staff have now been displaced… they’ve set up space on the stage, the gym stage,” they said, adding morale has gotten progressively worse.
“Because we can’t talk, we can’t get together, we have no place to do that. We have all these issues that we’re dealing with.”
They said there’s been no communication from the school board on whether this will be for the rest of the year or a temporary solution.
“I don’t know the situation with the portables … that would alleviate many problems because you would have these classrooms, these three classes would move into a portable, and then we would get our staff room back. We would get our library back, our gym back, and our stage back,” said the staff member.
Melissa Neild’s third grader is in her second week of school at Vincent Massey and is one of the students whose class is in the staff room.
“I had no idea until she got home yesterday. There isn’t even a window in the staff room.
Everyone that I’ve spoken to, they all seem to be frustrated with the situation. It’s not an ideal learning space for all of our kids.”
The Vincent Massey staff member said they have heard of similar issues at other schools in Durham.
“Every time I talk to somebody or run into somebody who teaches at another school that I know, I hear the same thing,” they said.
“It’s not fair. Students deserve a good education. The only way they can get a good education and a good learning experience, a good learning environment, is if they have the proper portables and classrooms and have teachers who are not running around trying to figure out how they’re going to modify their programs because now they don’t have the resources.”
Fallingbrook Public School in Whitby has also been struggling to deal with overcrowding, and parents shared similar concerns last week with CityNews, saying school officials were not reacting to the increase in housing developments and families moving into the region.
The Durham school board confirmed three temporary instructional spaces are currently in use to accommodate the increased student enrollment. The school currently has 10 portables, and an 11th portable is expected to arrive in mid-October to allow the school to reorganize and free up one of the temporary spaces.
“Adding more portables is dependent on the number of washroom facilities and parking spaces … To note, there is no hard and fast number with respect to student capacity. We must adhere to Ministry requirements on class sizes,” continued their statement.
Between 2019 and 2022, the population in Durham Region increased by nearly six per cent, rising by 40,000 people to 743,095. Durham Region expects to hit a population of one million people by 2041.
“[There’s] an influx of kids that have joined the school. There are two new housing developments, one near where I live. It seems like there are no considerations for any new schools to be built in our neighbourhoods,” said Neild.
The Ministry of Education said since 2018, the government has invested $164.4 million towards creating six new schools in Durham and additions to four existing schools, but ultimately, the school boards are responsible for managing growth and enrollment expectations.
“School boards have a responsibility to ensure the best utilization of schools to accommodate the always-changing number of students in the region,” said Ministry of Education spokesperson Grace Lee.
The boards were also provided over $2 million in temporary accommodation funding that boards can use to support the enrollment of students at the start of a school year, according to the Ministry of Education.
The school board said they continue to be proactive in seeking approval from the Ministry of Education for the creation of new schools to meet the rapid increase in population within the Durham Region.
“Ultimately, the decision to proceed rests with the Ministry. It is also important to note that the timing of school construction does not always align with the speed of residential growth – the approval, funding, and construction period can be lengthy,” read their statement.
“These kids deserve a good education. We’ve always been known to have a really good system. Unfortunately, I feel like we’re starting to fail terribly. That concerns me,” the school staff member said.
