Nineteen Toronto elementary schools got a failing grade on Tuesday, as ongoing construction and lack of space left them unprepared for the province-wide rollout of full-day kindergarten in Ontario.

The affected schools will still hold full-day classes for four- and five-year-old students, but some of those classes will be held in school gyms and libraries while construction on new classrooms wraps up.

Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals blamed a cold winter for construction delays that left some Ontario schools lagging behind.

"The kids will be accommodated somehow," Sandals said Tuesday at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Toronto. She said she expects construction on the unfinished classrooms to be complete within the next few weeks and months.

"Those kids are in a room, they're getting teaching, and they're in class," she said.

Sandals was at Our Lady of Lourdes to announce the complete rollout of full-day kindergarten in Ontario on the first day of the 2014-15 school year. The rollout has been a gradual, five-year process since 35,000 students started attending full-day kindergarten in 2010. Now, Sandals says 265,000 kindergarten students are enrolled in the program.

Schools have had to find or build additional class space to accommodate the additional students. The old half-day system allowed for morning and afternoon classes to share the same space. But with a full-day program, kindergarten classroom demands have effectively doubled province-wide.

The province has spent more than $1.5 billion to date on the program. Part of that money paid for the construction of 3,500 new kindergarten classrooms.

Sandals said full-day kindergarten will better prepare kids socially and psychologically to enter Grade 1.

"You can't teach the child until they've learned to settle into a group and (can) function in a classroom setting," she said. She added that test scores already show past full-day kindergarten students were better-prepared for the challenges of grade school.

Former education minister and now-Premier Kathleen Wynne introduced the full-day kindergarten bill in 2009.

Ontario NDP Education Critic Peter Tabuns slammed the Liberals later Tuesday, calling the construction delays an "unnecessary headache" and a "failure" on the part of the government.

"The Minister certainly can't blame the weather for the 640 kindergarten classrooms that were overflowing with more than thirty children last year," he said in a statement. "The government seems more interested in making announcements than keeping their promises to kids, families and educators."

The following Toronto District School Board schools were not prepared for Tuesday's full-day kindergarten rollout:

  • Rosedale Junior Public School
  • Albion Heights Junior Middle School
  • Elmbank Junior Middle Academy
  • H.J. Alexander Community School
  • Islington Junior Middle School
  • Pelmo Park Public School
  • Perth Avenue Junior Public School
  • Weston Memorial Junior Public School
  • Brown Junior Public School
  • Buchanan Public School
  • Church Street Junior Public School

The following Toronto Catholic District School Board schools were also not finished with their classroom upgrades:

  • St. Agnes Catholic School
  • Our Lady of Victory Catholic School
  • St. Maria Goretti Catholic School
  • St. Matthew Catholic School
  • Blessed Sacrament Catholic School
  • Our Lady of Wisdom Catholic School
  • St. Augustine Catholic School
  • St. Malachy Catholic School