big issues:class sizes and staffing

Trustees do not decide how many students sit in each classroom. Ontario sets class size rules in Ontario Regulation 132/12, and boards must organize classes within those rules. The rules work differently by grade, as the facts below show.

Within those rules, trustees make decisions about board priorities and spending. Through the budget and other board-wide decisions, trustees influence how resources, like teachers, are distributed across the school system. A board may choose class size targets that go beyond provincial minimum requirements. Those decisions may involve balancing class size goals with other staffing needs, programs, and student supports.

What trustees do not do is manage daily school operations. They do not set the provincial funding formula or class size rules, negotiate the teacher contracts, or decide how many students enrol at a given school. Trustees act together, through decisions of the board (Go to information source).

All four Toronto boards must meet Ontario's class size rules. Each board decides how to distribute staff among its schools. Staffing decisions start with projections of how many students each school will have, which shapes how teaching positions are shared out. At the school level, principals organize students into classes based on enrolment, available teachers, provincial rules, and classroom space. So class sizes can vary among schools and programs.

Two things drive how this plays out.

Who decides staffing. Trustees do not assign teachers to classrooms or hire school staff. That is operational work done by board administration and, in each school, the principal under Ontario Regulation 298. Staffing must also follow the collective agreements—the contracts between boards and the unions representing teachers, negotiated under the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, 2014.

How funding and enrolment shape it. The Province decides most of a board's funding. About two thirds of it is tied to how many students the board has (Go to information source). As enrolment shifts, so does the funding. Enrolment also explains combined-grade or "split" classes. Sometimes there are too many students for one class but not enough to fund two. In that case, students from two or three grades are taught together by one teacher.

A class size limit was set, then reversed under supervision. In March 2025, TDSB trustees voted to limit Grades 4 to 8 classes to 32 students (Go to information source). That limit went beyond the provincial rule, which sets a board-wide average rather than a per-class maximum (Go to information source). The Province placed the TDSB under supervision in June 2025. In December 2025, the supervisor decided the board's class sizes should align with the provincial rules (Go to information source).

Enrolment changes affect staffing. Enrolment is a major factor in Ontario's funding formula. As the number of students a board serves changes, so can its funding and the number of staff it can support. Each board publishes its own enrolment projections and yearly budget.

A new round of collective bargaining is underway. That is the process where unions and school boards negotiate new contracts. Central agreements can affect many aspects of schools and classrooms, including staffing levels and how classes are organized. The central agreements covering Ontario's teachers and education workers run to August 31, 2026 (Go to information source). On June 3, 2026, five major education unions served notice to bargain (Go to information source).