The Toronto District School Board is exploring the idea of creating an all-kindergarten school in order to alleviate overcrowding at an East York elementary school.

The Thorncliffe Park Elementary School in the Don Mills and Don Valley Parkway area is one of the biggest elementary schools in the country.

The school has 20 portable units on site to deal with its rapidly expanding student population, which now numbers around 1,800.

The province has already agreed to provide the school board with $16 million to build a new school in the area.

But the board has yet to decide when the school will be built, and is considering a number of options, including opening one for kindergarten students only, said the school board trustee for the area.

"The idea of an all-kindergarten school is an intriguing one, and one that we're certainly looking at, but it hasn't been finalized," Gerri Gershon told CBC News on Wednesday.

"That decision hasn't been made. We're still deciding where we're going to place the school and looking at the various possibilities."

If built, the all-kindergarten school would be the first of its kind in Canada, although similar schools have been set up in the United States to ease overcrowding.

The all-kindergarten option is being considered, Gershon said, because the Thorncliffe school has a disproportionately high number of younger students.

The school has 32 kindergarten classes alone, which have about 800 to 1,000 students.

"It is an area that's experiencing considerable growth," she said.

"The surrounding schools are at capacity or over capacity, so we can't put the children in the surrounding schools."