As the clock ticks toward a potential provincewide strike by Alberta’s teachers, parents say classroom overcrowding is having a disastrous domino effect on learning with tutors being hired to fill in the gaps.

Kira Schulz says she hired a tutor for her 10-year-old daughter, Skyelar Schmidt, to prevent her from falling behind while trying to tune into teachers over the din of her peers jammed in classrooms.

“It’s really tough to see,” Schulz said from her home in Airdrie, a bedroom community of Calgary.

As a school volunteer, Schulz said she has seen students working in hallways become the new norm and that noise and crowded spaces are causing more outbursts.

“I remember when I was in school, you had space to walk. They weren’t shoulder to shoulder with people,” she said.

Skyelar said

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