Heather Wright/The Independent

Michele LaLonge-Davey has been kicked, scratched and head butted by the school children she was trying to help.

It’s part of the increasing amount of violence members of CUPE working for both the public and Catholic boards in Lambton County are reporting. The educational assistant and president of Local 1238 of CUPE says lack of provincial funding in the classroom is to blame.

The local results of the province-wide study were released Monday. It was meant to spark a conversation about education funding during the Feb. 27 provincial election.

The survey found that 77 per cent of educational workers represented by the union had experienced violent or disruptive incidents. And 38 per cent say it happens daily.

LaLonge-Davey can relate.

“As an EA, I’ve been head butted you’re scratched, you’re bit, kicked.. verbal assault is huge,” she says adding the board simply does not have enough educational assistants and child and youth workers in the classroom to help the kids who need it.

“If the funding was appropriate, the supports could be in place that would result in less violence.”
Dave Geroux, president of CUPE 4168 which represents Catholic school workers in Lambton agrees.

“We don’t have enough staff to do what we need to do for students in the schools,” he says. “So what ends up happening you have maybe a student who needs one-on-one supports and we know that. But what happens is, we don’t have the staff to do that, so maybe they only get half-time support or one third support.

“In the times when they’re not being supported they get escalated, they get frustrated,” says Geroux.

And that can lead to violence.

“When one student in the classroom gets escalated, you’re not able to settle them back down. That sets off other students and for some of them, it’s a very frustrating experience.”

And Geroux says only the students with the greatest needs are getting any support at all.
Often, he adds, they aren’t really getting academic support.

“For the most part, the majority of our days are managing behaviors and trying to work with some basic life skills…They’re not doing that academic, curricular type job that people picture and so those students who need that in particular are missing out because we don’t have enough staff to support all of the students who have identified needs.”

Geroux says in the Catholic system in Lambton-Kent alone he believes another 100 educational assistants are needed.

But that depends on funding, something the union said has decreased in the last decade.
CUPE’s study says in 2012, the province spent 19.1 per cent of its revenue on schools. Today, its about 13.9 per cent. If the funding level remained the same, CUPE contends, there would have been $10.7 billion more funding to school boards this year.

The situation, the survey points out, is leaving educational workers burnt out.

About 46 per cent said they’ve taken time off work because of the stress of the excessive workload.

LaLonge-Davey adds the stress of dealing with violence in the understaffed classrooms is also taking its toll on EAs.

“They’re done. People are broken, they’re tired, they’re exhausted,” she said.
And she says, they’re sad “because we want what’s best for kids. We don’t want kids to have to feel how they’re feeling, and not (have) these behaviours,” she said.

One EA told her she doesn’t feel like they can serve the kids correctly. “The workers feel that the kids deserve more.”