The Day of Mourning is fast approaching. Some workers face unsafe workplaces and work for bosses that don’t take proper precautions to keep everyone safe. Nobody should be injured at work or worse – be killed because of inadequate training or equipment. I encourage you to share on your socials some of the following examples. If you know that your own labour council or area is having a ceremony, please consider attending. Safety is no accident.
In solidarity,
Tanya
‘Alarming’ rise in attacks on Hamilton public school staff: report
‘It is a crisis,’ high school union head says as incidents more than double
4,330 violent incident reports filed by school staff during the 2022-23 school year. Some employees are exercising their right to refuse unsafe work.
Pictures posted on the Canadian Office and Professional Employees union Local 527 website show some of the school injuries suffered by members.
COPE 527 photos
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Union leaders say an “alarming” surge in violent attacks by students on their members at Hamilton public schools will only get worse unless the province antes up more money for educational assistants and behavioural professionals.
The public board’s latest annual report shows the 4,330 violent incident reports filed by school staff during the 2022-23 school year were more than double the year before, with educational assistants and child and youth care practitioners seeing the biggest increases.
While more than 80 per cent of overall incidents were categorized as “no injury,” those requiring first aid saw the steepest rise at 499, compared to 139 the year before. Incidents needing health care and time off from work were up for all employee groups other than high school teachers, whose health care incidents dropped by one.
Yet time-off-work incidents for high school teachers jumped to 10 in 2022-23 from none in 2021-22, two the year before that and four in 2018-19, the year before the pandemic.
“I don’t like to be hyperbolic with my language but it is a crisis,” said Daryl Jerome, president of the board’s secondary teachers local. “It’s alarming.”
He said attacks on high school educational assistants are a particular concern, with nearly one in five incident reports from those working in self-contained high school classrooms for students with special needs.
“They’re the lowest paid and they’re getting literally beaten up, the stuffing kicked out of them, on any given day.”
Jerome said the situation is so bad members are exercising their right to refuse unsafe work, including for about nine hours at Nora Frances Henderson Secondary School last November.
He said the board is trying to address the problem with a review by specialized services superintendent Sharon Stephanian and more staff training, but those measures can only go so far without more provincial funding for EAs and specialists.
“You have students that are in need, a 100 per cent, and we will teach those students that are in need but you have to resource it properly, you have to have them in the right environment,” Jerome said.
“Unless there’s some massive injection of funds and overhaul of how we teach and accommodate these young people, it’s going to get worse. We’re seeing people leave the profession.”
Jeff Sorensen, president of the board’s elementary teachers local, echoes those sentiments, suggesting many school boards see more training as a cost-saving measure to avoid hiring more staff.
He said his union supports integrating special-needs students into regular classrooms, but violence often occurs because schools are short-staffed due to illnesses or EAs are busy with non-teaching tasks, like helping students go the washroom.
“There are too few adults trying to help too many kids, and some of those kids have real, serious needs that cause them in their frustration to act out, often violently,” Sorensen said. “(Integration) has to be with the proper supports and that’s what’s lacking.”
Susan Lucek, who as president of Canadian Office and Professional Employees union (COPE) Local 527 represents EAs and child and youth care practitioners, said she believes her members under-report their violent incidents because they are seen as part of the job.
“If they’re not sent for health care or (have) lost time, they’re not going to do it because nothing gets done,” she said. “There’s supposed to be a debriefing after every incident, but there’s not enough time, not enough people.”
Lucek said she’s also had members refuse to work because they feel it’s unsafe and the ongoing violence leads to more sick days, which have also been on the rise at the board.
“I just had a member that went to the hospital the other day after being kicked in the head by a student. I have one returning that has been off for two years,” she said.
“Those are the extreme cases, but even the things we don’t think anything of, a slap here, a kick there, that all affects your mental health, and I’ve noticed an increase in medical leaves for mental health among COPE members.”
The increase in violent incident reports had trustees questioning what the board can do when the latest statistics were presented at their Jan. 30 human resources committee meeting.
While staff said the trend may look worse because numbers dropped during the pandemic, when most students were learning from home, the 2022-23 incidents requiring first aid, health care or time off were also often multiple times higher than 2018-19.
“It looks like this could be one of the most serious problems we’re facing as a board,” trustee Todd White said. “I don’t want to sensationalize it, but that’s what it looks like.”
Associate director Matthew Gerard said the report will be used to ensure there is better monitoring, proper resources and measures to resolve violent incidents, which will likely be reflected in staff’s proposed board budget for the 2024-25 school year.
“Ultimately what this needs to become is, in your mind, the baseline data that helps you to understand what staff recommends in terms of resourcing within the system, so when you see the budget, this is some good information to consider.”
Union seeks government action to address school violence
Written by Randy ThomsWednesday, Oct 18 2023, 9:35 PM
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Alarm bells are being raised about violence in schools.
One union says it is on the rise.
Susan Lucek, a president with the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, says staff are scrambling for help.
“As education workers, as frontline staff, we say the increase in violence is not because educators and parents don’t care about kids. It’s because the government hasn’t invested in increasing the boots on the ground, educators in front of kids,” says Lucek.
Lucek says of the $24 million the Ministry of Education set aside to reduce the risk of violence in schools, only a small fraction is being allocated to educational assistance for students in need.
COPE would like to see an increase in education support workers in the classroom.
The NDP’s Education Critic Chandra Pasma feels the level of violence in schools in Ontario is at crisis levels.
“Classrooms are being evacuated daily, teachers and education workers are being injured on the job, workers are being given kevlar to wear in the classroom, and workers and students are being told they need to get better at dodging,” says Pasma.
“The mental health of our kids is suffering, but the resources aren’t there to support them. In our schools, large class sizes and a lack of educational support staff mean kids aren’t getting the help and attention they need, and that leads to frustration.” Pasma says education workers should not have to put their bodies on the line or go to work with protective gear as experienced by some education staff.
“We need to properly address this epidemic of violence in our schools with mental health resources, additional staff and training on safe intervention and de-escalation. We need the government to start working collaboratively and respectfully with teachers and education workers instead of constantly undermining them and disrespecting them.”
Hamilton education assistants describe shocking daily workplace violence in schools
Saira Peesker · CBC News · Posted: Jul 25, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: July 25
Jennifer Timmins says she wears Kevlar protective clothing to her job as an educational assistant in Hamilton because she is attacked by students almost daily. (Saira Peesker/CBC)
Jennifer Timmins says she often comes home from work with bruises, cuts or scratches that are hard to explain to her three children.
Timmins works as an educational assistant (EA) at a public school in inner-city Hamilton, a job that goes beyond helping students with their work. She says she often finds herself breaking up fights and managing students with aggressive behaviour, subjecting herself to violence that nearly any other worker would find unconscionable – and she wants it to stop.
“Every day I go in thinking, ‘What is my student going to do today? Are they going to give me a concussion or leave bruises all over?” says Timmins, who says she is hit, slapped, bit, head-butted and kicked routinely. She says one student “loves to kick you right in your stomach, your private area, wherever he can manage to get hands on… Holding your hair, ripping your glasses off.”
She has worked as an EA since 2015, and says the situation in schools has become much worse in the last four years, and says many of her colleagues are trying to get out. She wears Kevlar protective clothing to work, as do all the other EAs at her school.
Timmins believes accepting violence has become an expectation of EAs, even though violence against other school workers is still taken seriously.
“If your principal was getting kicked in the privates, or if it was a teacher,” there would be consequences, says Timmins, recalling a time that she and a teacher both got punched while breaking up a fight. The teacher was sent home immediately, while Timmins was expected to keep working. “EAs take the brunt of everything… I feel like the dirt on the bottom of their feet.”
Upper end of salary band is $26.10 an hour; many have second jobs
Timmins’ union, Local 527 of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees, says a “lack of provincial funding, critical staffing shortages, and limited access to mental health supports are all contributing to the crisis in our schools.” It released a public statement last month that urged parents to ask their children what kind of violence they have seen at school, saying most would be shocked.
The release described “classrooms being evacuated, students sitting soiled in their own feces, staff unable to work due to injury, principals at their wits end, and a government who chooses to blame parents.”
Union local president Susan Lucek, who worked as an EA until 2019, told CBC Hamilton last month that an “unprecedented” 59 education assistants from the union resigned this year, a staffing situation made worse by a lack of new recruits taking up the career. This spring, Mohawk College announced it was shutting down its educational assistant program, saying applications had declined dramatically in recent years.
Lucek said the upper end of the salary band for EAs in her union is $26.10 hourly, adding that is being increased by $1 per hour for each of the next four years.
“By the time I retire I may be at $30,” she said, adding she understands why young people might not want to take on student debt for a job where they know the wages are low and they might face violence. “A lot of our members work three jobs to make ends meet.”
‘I don’t know what happened to our kids’
Lucek says members have launched work stoppages for unsafe conditions at least twice this year at Hamilton public schools. A recent union survey found 50 per cent of members experience more than one violent incident a day, and that one in five have been discouraged from filing an incident report after such an incident.
Hamilton EA Keira Major says there are few consequences for students who assault her colleagues.
“They are sent to the principal’s office and they… return with stickers or suckers or other tangible things with no disciplinary action,” she said. “When questioned about this, we are told that they apologized and said they wouldn’t do it again or better yet, because of their learning profile we can not discipline.”
CBC Hamilton reached out to the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, requesting an interview to discuss these concerns and its expectations and standards around safety for EAs. Communications officer Kim Zarzuela declined, saying in an email that the board couldn’t comment because it is currently negotiating with Local 527 of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE), which represents the board’s EAs: “As such, we are not able to provide an interview at this time.”
When CBC Hamilton asked Premier Doug Ford about the issue, during a Hamilton press conference in July, he put the responsibility for curbing violence on the school boards.
During a shipbuilding announcement at the Hamilton harbour on July 13, Ontario premier Doug Ford said school boards are responsible for managing school violence. (Saira Peesker/CBC)
“We’ve hired thousands of new school assistants and educators so we’re going to continue to invest in education,” he said. “The school boards need to address some of the violence in certain areas.”
Major is so concerned by what she’s seen working in Hamilton high schools that she’s moving her family to a small town in Southern Ontario. She has children with learning differences, and feels that in Hamilton schools, they’ll “get eaten alive” in a system that is seeing increased antisocial behaviour without increases in discipline and support.
“I don’t know what happened to our kids, but their minds have snapped,” she said.
A punch to the face. A bite to the back. Chunks of hair. Violence toward staff at public schools above pre-pandemic levels
Union says lack of funding, staff and mental-health supports behind the problem
By Kate McCullough Spectator Reporter
4 min to read
John Rennison / The Hamilton Spectator
Cynthia Thomas is an educational assistant with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. She’s also a bouncer in Hess Village, yet she says she’s been “beat up” many times in the classroom.
She’s a bouncer in Hamilton’s Hess Village, yet she’s been “beat up” many times by students at her day job. Educational Assistant Cynthia Thomas says she knows she’s in for a tough day when the school bell rings. A punch to the face. A bite to the back. Chunks of hair ripped out. A new bruise or other injury
Educational assistant Cynthia Thomas shows a bruise on her arm.
Violent incidents at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board have increased beyond the levels they were before the pandemic, says the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE) Local 527, which represents EAs and other support staff at the board.
In a recent statement, the union shared photos of bruised educators who were punched, kicked and head-butted. One anonymous worker shared they had nightmares about being attacked and were “afraid to return to work.”
“Violence at school affects everyone. Students, families, and staff,” the union said. “Lack of provincial funding, critical staffing shortages and limited access to mental-health supports are all contributing to the crisis in our schools.”
In the 2022-23 school year, there were 3,869 reports of violence, the majority (2,708) against COPE members, a nine-year high. EAs typically have the most direct contact with students with special needs and, therefore, are the most likely recipients of violence, the union says.
Educational assistant Cynthia Thomas wearing protective equipment.
“This number does not reflect the amount of incidents that go unreported,” the union website reads. According to COPE, one in five members report being encouraged to avoid submitting an incident report. This year’s number is up significantly from 2021-22 (1,821 incidents) and 2020-21 (1,363) — though both school years had more remote learning. In the two years prior to the pandemic, there were 2,560 and 2,850 incidents, respectively. The HWDSB didn’t provide its own statistics or a response to the statement by deadline. Thomas has noticed a “huge difference” in student behaviour since she worked as an EA with the Catholic board from 2003 to 2013.
Since starting with the HWDSB in November, the veteran EA has filed 80 to 100 incident reports, she estimates. In her previous tenure as an EA, she filled out just one or two. Thomas said she’s not surprised to hear many of her board colleagues are resigning and retiring in droves. This year alone there have been 56 resignations and nine retirements — and more are expected over the summer, according to the union. Typically, the union would see just a handful of resignations each year. “People don’t want to come to work and be abused,” said COPE 527 president Susan Lucek.
Twenty Catholic board EAs retired or resigned in 2021, while 24 resigned in 2022 and 15 to date in 2023. A hiring spree in 2022 resulted in 91 members hired, but most were “unqualified,” Marilyn Pavao, president of CUPE 3396 representing EAs at the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, said in an email.
Violence, along with related issues of staffing shortages and underqualified hires, is spurring resignations, she said. The Catholic board has also heard concerns of increased violence from its employees, board chair Pat Daly told The Spec. “We have heard … that the number of violent incidents has increased in recent years,” he said in an email. He said this is due to the current “complexity of student needs and other factors.” The public board union says gaps in classroom staffing allow incidents to escalate. Pavao told The Spec workplace violence has “escalated,” but “reporting is still low.” In 2022-23, violence represented 48 per cent of workplace incidents at the Catholic board, compared with 18 per cent in 2018-19, according to a June 6 report. Though, per the report, some incidents were “previously miscategorized” and may affect the data.
he board says it’s working to address violence through several initiatives, including a focus on individual education plans (IEPs), behaviour management training, investigating violent incidents, external consultation and personal protective equipment (PPE) for safety. At the same time, recruitment has “become increasingly challenging in recent years,” Daly said, forcing the board to bolster recruitment strategies, including partnerships with community colleges, job fairs and advertising, as well as upping the hourly rate. The public board has faced similar recruitment challenges. “Despite the board’s ongoing recruitment efforts to maintain healthy pools of occasional staff, staff are unable to fill all posted vacancies on a daily basis,” reads a June 6 report. In fact, in no month during the 2022-23 school year did Hamilton’s public board fill half of its EA positions, the report shows. The fill rate for EAs in May was just 40 per cent. Throughout the year, rates fluctuated between 30 and 48 per cent.
Staff and parents say the shortage is compromising student safety and education.
Educational assistant Katelyn Deveau wears arm guards, a padded jacket, a neck guard and a bump cap (required for hair pulling or top of head bumping) to her job with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
John Rennison / The Hamilton Spectator A first-time EA, Chris Cooke said his initial days with the public board were “eye-opening.”
Former EA Katelyn Deveau was punched in the face by an upset student, who was set off by another child in the class. “It was either that or a pencil to my eye because in his other hand he was clenching a pencil ready to hurt the other student,” said the educator, who now works as an child and youth care practitioner with HWDSB. “I instantly knew I had a concussion.” She was off work for several months as a result.
A first-time EA, Chris Cooke said his initial days with the public board were “eye-opening.” “I did not know (about) the deep scratches and the bleeding, and then eventually the biting and coming home covered in bruises,” he said, adding that training is minimal and it’s “daunting” to be “thrown in” to the job. Folks outside the profession are only “peripherally” aware of what being an EA involves, Cooke said. “They’re assuming … it’s similar stuff to what the teachers get, but it’s not,” he said.
‘It’s not their fault’
Like most EAs, Thomas doesn’t blame the kids. In fact, they’re one of the reasons she’s planning to keep her job. “At least I know somehow, some way I’m making a difference in somebody else’s … life,” she said. After a student calms down, Thomas can often be found wiping a student’s tears away or giving them a hug. “Because it’s not their fault,” she said. “They don’t know how to to communicate or express their feelings, especially if they’re nonverbal.” But there are things that could be done to prevent situations from escalating and support EAs, she said. Increased staff and pay — both to attract talent and compensate employees who work physically demanding jobs and don’t get paid when students are on break — would help make classrooms safer for students and staff, Thomas said.
COPE 527 vice-president Linda Kowalski said everybody deserves to be safe at work. “And all of those children that are trying to go to school just to get an education, they’re watching this,” she said. “So how safe are they feeling?”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the number of COPE 527 member retirements. There have been nine so far in the 2022-23 school year, not one as originally reported.
