Jose Rosales, a student at Westside Middle School in Winder, Georgia, answers a question from another student at Charleswood Junior High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada via the internet during a cooperative education project with Canada January 24, 20
Jose Rosales, a student at Westside Middle School in Winder, Georgia, answers a question from another student at Charleswood Junior High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada via the internet during a cooperative education project with Canada January 24, 2008. The campus of Westside Middle School in Winder, Georgia is the host site where school officials, government leaders and partnerships from as far as Canada gathered to view a new era in learning by bringing virtual experiences right into the classroom. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/Handout Reuters/Tami Chappell

Ontario could be faced with few number of schools in the coming years, as the current provincial government administration mulls closing some of the education institutions in order to generate a savings of $500 million by 2017-18.

Liz Sandals, Education Minister, said the present number of more than 600 schools in Ontario is no longer attuned to the present times because "more than half empty." She told reporters on Tuesday funding all is inappropriate given the province's budget deficit. "We want to make sure money is being spent on educating the students that are there and not on funding empty seats," she said. The education funding cuts are being eyed to help eliminate a $12.5-billion deficit in three years' time.

Sandals noted this year's education funding will reach $22.5 billion, depicting a 56.5 percent jump, or over $4,000 per pupil, a figure she claimed is enormous compared to other provincial government's budget for education spending. And seemingly impractical because enrollment numbers have been declining in the past years, she added.

The plan will inevitably result to "ballooning" class sizes and teacher layoffs, Peter Tabuns, a New Democrat MPP, cautioned. He likewise stressed the new plan runs counter to the words Premier Kathleen Wynne committed just four months ago that there will be no education funding cuts in Ontario.

The way the Progressive Conservatives see it, the closures will happen in the small-town and rural Ontario areas. Schools in these areas described as the "hub of the community," according to the Canadian Press. Shutting down some of them, the PCs said, would not in any way still result in huge savings.

"Shutting them down and busing kids 15, 20 or 30 kilometres away, I don't think is an option," Garfield Dunlop, PC education critic, told Canadian Press. "And I don't think it's going to save her $500 million either."

Despite the impending school closures, Sandals vowed Ontario's Roman Catholic school system will remain as is and will not be combined with the public system, as the provincial Green Party has proposed. She maintained the government will abide to the ruling that Ontario will have a separate system for Catholic education, as mandated by the Constitution.