Admin
Home  smcdsbcat  Newsletter  St. Catherine of Siena Schoo...  School Reorganization

School Reorganization
Published on Sep 12, 2019 13:50

Hello Every One

Each spring, our Simcoe-Muskoka Catholic District School Board’s planning department projects each school’s enrolment for the following year. Based on that number, staffing is put into place to service the number of students a school has. The staffing process follows very strict guidelines established by the Ministry of Education. These are known as student : pupil ratios which also have “caps -meaning certain aged classes can not exceed a ratio. For example, primary classes (grades 1-3) cannot exceed a 20 : 1 students to teacher ratio to begin a year.

 This year, our school’s enrolment exceeded our Board’s projections significantly requiring a reorganization of classes. Our larger enrolment requires hiring 1.5 additional teachers in order to meet Ministry expectations around class sizes. Over 100 students in our school will experience some level of change (new teacher, moving from a split class to a straight class or vice versa). These changes will result in smaller class sizes for our kids - which means more opportunity for support for them. These changes can also bring about some initial concern for students as they will experience change. Our staff will work very hard to support our students through this transition.

Tonight, the children involved in this reorganization will come home with a letter for you outlining how the change impacts them. The vast majority of the reorganization has occurred in grades 1-6. Again, we are mandated to make these changes to lower class sizes. The reorganization will occur on Friday morning. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to settling in for what will be an outstanding school year.

Rich