Special needs shortage: Educational assistant vacancy rates hit 30 per cent

It’s a critical shortage that some warn may lead to a student or staff member suffering a major injury in a London-area school.

Article content

The Thames Valley District school board is running an educational assistant vacancy rate of 30 per cent and it’s hurting both students and education workers, union officials say.

Article content

The fallout, says one educational assistant and union leader, is violent pupils hurting both staff and pupils, inadequate grooming, untrained staff working with kids with complex needs and staff burnout.

Mental health leaves have increased 13 per cent for teachers, educational assistants and early childhood educators since the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a $16-million hole in the school board’s $1 billion budget.

“If you could get people in buildings, doing the job, then you wouldn’t have EAs going off sick and burned out and getting injured as much,” said Rebecca Avey, president of CUPE 7575.

Article content

Violent incidents in October more than doubled from the previous month in London-area public schools, says Craig Smith, president of the Thames Valley district of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

“It’s beyond being a problem. We’re at a crisis point with this,” Smith said last week.

School administrators also are finding themselves, teachers and early childhood educators needing to step in to do EA work, taking away from pupils learning and other necessary tasks.

“It’s coming down to the needs of the students are not being met,” Avey said. “Students are being buddied up with other students so we’re able to support them on some level of assistance.

Article content

“The unfortunate thing is, some students go without support because they don’t have the money to fund the staff who need to be there.”

The staffing crunch also means “huge wait lists” for student assessments, she said. “Without the assessments students aren’t getting what they need.”

Avey, who spent 20 years as an educational assistant, says an outdated provincial funding model is the root of the problem.

“For years, we’ve seen an underfunding by the provincial government – ​​they’re using a past model that doesn’t fit the needs of the education system now,” she said. “It all comes back to: ‘Are you funding school boards appropriately?’ Our answer to that is a hard no.”

Trustee Beth Mai is chair of the Thames Valley school board. She said educational assistants’ salaries are set through provincial negotiations.

Article content

“We budget accordingly,” she wrote in an email.

The London District Catholic school board, which also is hiring EAs, has been able to pay their educational assistants about $4 more an hour than Thames Valley EAs, where a top wage is around $26 an hour, Avey said.

Mai said the board has addressed concerns about “the discrepancy” with other school boards, with local MPPs and Education Minister Stephen Lecce.

“We are pleased with the open dialogue and the exploration of opportunities to resolve this issue,” Mai said.

Isha Chaudhuri, spokesperson for the Education Ministry, said education is being funded “at the highest levels in Ontario’s history” under the Tory government.

“That’s why we have funded education at the highest levels in Ontario’s history with $600 million more this school year,” she said in an email. “Thames Valley District school board is receiving an additional $32 million in funding for a total of over $1 billion to support the needs of students and reported an increase of 23.5 per cent in the number of EAs since 2018.”

[email protected]

Article content