Dear Minister of Education and Child Care,

I am a worker in the British Columbia public school system. Public school support staff help ensure all students have access to quality, inclusive learning in safe and healthy learning environments.

Schools should be a safe, inclusive place for all workers and students. Sadly, this is too often not the case. Every worker in the public education system has experienced, witnessed, or had a coworker affected by a violent incident. Violence in our public schools not only jeopardizes the safety and well-being of students and workers, but also undermines the fundamental purpose of schools as nurturing environments for intellectual, emotional, and social growth.

Public school support staff play an integral role in delivering inclusive, quality education. But we cannot do that without more support. Education Assistants, Child and Youth Care Workers, Indigenous Support Workers, Strong Start Facilitators, Early Childhood Educators, and other direct student support workers are all struggling to do their jobs safely and effectively.

Direct student support plays a critical role in making sure all learners can succeed in school. Students have increasingly complex learning needs, and too often direct student support workers are stretched across too many students to be able to keep themselves, their coworkers, and students safe and supported. This results too often in injured workers and negative impacts on all students’ ability to learn.

We also know there are significant waiting times for students to be assessed and get the support they need to succeed in the classroom. Students who should be getting direct student support are too often left waiting months or years before being assessed, and getting access to the individual education plan they need.

We know that school districts are struggling to recruit and retain workers in every classification. Direct student support workers are burning out from high workload and are too often forced to take extended time off when injured on the job. Districts have difficulty recruiting and retaining trades and maintenance workers that can find higher pay in other sectors. Many school support workers hold second or even third jobs to make ends meet.

These conditions are not sustainable for our public education system. Public school support workers deserve better, our students deserve better. We know that there are solutions that would make schools safer for everyone that would improve the ability for educators to deliver a truly inclusive education for every student.

We call on the Ministry of Education and Child Care and the Province of British Columbia to work with CUPE to address violence in our workplaces, and to take immediate action to invest in public education by:

• Addressing recruitment and retention challenges by committing to wages and hours that makes a career in the K-12 public school sector sustainable and livable.

• Ending the backlog of B.C. students waiting for assessments.

• Holding school districts accountable for including impacted CUPE members in the development and implementation of safety plans

• Increasing public school staffing to ensure that direct student support workers can support all students safely and effectively.

In Unity & Solidarity,
The School Support Workers of BC’s public education system