School District 57 trustees will be given a snapshot later this month to explain some of the challenges teachers face in public school classrooms.
The school board has asked superintendent Brian Pepper to prepare a report twice each school year on classroom size and composition in the district. The reports will reveal how many students are in each class and information about special needs students in each classroom who require individualized education plans (IEPs).
The reports are to be compiled in November and March for the board's management and finance committee in an in-camera meeting. Some of the more sensitive information in those reports that might identify the have and have-not schools will not be publicly revealed, but trustees will have access to that information.
"In the past, if you went into the government website, the way class size and class composition was reported was, every February all the classes and all the schools were listed, and it's my understanding they will not be listing the numbers of students with IEPs because that's a privacy issue," said board chair Sharel Warrington.
"We also have gray-area students, who have not even been identified that need support. When a class has a mix of students with social and behavioural needs, it may not be identified with an education plan and we need to be aware of that to be able to advocate for more support for our schools and our classes."
Prince George District Teachers Association president Matt Pearce said trustees need to know more about how class composition can affect learning outcomes, especially in cases when teachers have several students with learning disabilities or behavioural issues working with large class sizes.
"They really need to find out about the real serious cases where the size of the class and the composition of the class make it difficult to meet the needs of the class," said Pearce.
"They aren't everyday occurrences, but they do exist. We have a class in the district with 23 students and 11 IEPs. We have senior academic courses with seven or eight IEPS and 28 or 29 students. Those are difficult classes to meet the needs of students. You don't want to see kids shutting down in September or October because they can't get the attention they need to be successful."
B.C. schools have upper restrictions on the number of students in each classroom, depending on the age of the students. The kindergarten limit is 22, for grades one to three the limit is 24, and grade four to 12 classes are capped at 30.
Pearce is counting on trustees to push for more teacher support if the board becomes aware of situations where classroom composition issues are negatively affecting learning outcomes for the majority of students,
"We are in a fortunate position that there are some surplus funds, certainly enough funds to cover the more serious situations," said Pearce. "Especially in the early grades, there are lots of kids who haven't received the testing, and there are some tests you can't do until the child is an older age, so they might not have any designations. But they are going to need some support if they're going to be successful.
"There are ways to make sure the board can become aware of the very specifics and yet the public can be aware in a more general sense, so it is wise to shape that data in a way to take a lot of the identifiers away from it."
The school district will spend the bulk of a $1.5 million learning improvement fund (LIF) to pay 58 part-time or term-position teachers to fill roles as learning assistants, counsellors, support teachers, and learning centre teachers. The additional roles amount to the equivalent of 14.48 full-time teaching positions and those teachers are now working in the district. Board administration consulted with the the teachers' union to determine how best to spend learning improvement funds.
Pearce wonders why the board has not designated any LIF funding to pay school librarians. The B.C. teachers are taking the government to court for provisions of their 2002 contract which were stripped, which guaranteed all schools would have access to librarians and counsellors.
