Violence against school
staff is on the rise
The number of Vancouver educators assaulted by public school students has doubled over the last three years.
The number of Vancouver educators assaulted by public school students has doubled over the last three years.
School employees were bitten, kicked, spat on, slapped and punched, resulting in a tripling of injuries over the same period.
In some extreme cases, students also brought weapons to school and threatened staff, according to violent-incident reports on file in the school district. There were also nine instances of parents verbally threatening staff from 2006 through 2009.
The violent-incident summary reports were obtained by The Vancouver Sun under the Freedom of Information Act. Schools and names of individuals were not released to protect students' identities.
The majority of victims were student support workers. Teachers were second in line, followed by principals, youth and family workers and vice-principals.
Some of the more serious incidents include:
- A Grade 9 student pointed a gun at another student in a tech class Jan. 11, 2009 and was later suspended for five days. The student, who had not been flagged as having any behavioural issues, was removed permanently from that class.
- A student support worker was bitten on the inside of his right thigh by a student who had earlier been removed from class for kicking, shouting and pushing chairs over on Jan. 13 this year. The regular support worker and parent were asked to develop a safety plan and the injured male worker was reassigned to another student.
- A secondary school teacher fled from a classroom March 2, 2009 after a student began to yell and shake furniture and pushed over a fridge. The student then chased the teacher, grabbing and scratching the teacher's hand. The teacher escaped the room when another student pinned the disruptive student's arms. Later that morning, the same student punched a vice-principal, once in the stomach and eight times in the chest, during a struggle outside the office. A medical exclusion to prevent the student from returning to the school was being pursued.
The number of assaults doubled from 56 in 2006 to 112 in 2009. Over the same period, assaults resulting in injuries more than tripled, from 31 in 2006 to 100 in 2009.
School violence comes with a cost. WorkSafeBC statistics show that from 2004 to 2008, the last year for which statistics were available, compensation claim payouts due to violence in Vancouver schools totalled $53,222. In the same period, 448 days of work were lost.
Claims for other school districts in BC show WorkSafeBC paid out $2.72 million as a result of violence in the workplace between 2004 to 2008.
The increase in assaults and injuries to Vancouver school staff took almost all school administrators and union officials by surprise. While all were aware of individual incidents, the rapid increase had gone virtually unnoticed.
"It does raise a concern any time someone gets hurt, and I would be concerned if there has been a growth," Vancouver school board chairwoman Patti Bacchus said.
Bacchus told The Sun the board wasn't aware the numbers of violent incidents had increased and planned to talk to staff about it.
"There's always a concern we have safety procedures in place," she said, adding that the higher numbers could be due to an improved reporting system.
Paul Faoro, the president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 15, which represents student support workers -- who are most likely to be injured on the job by students -- said he was surprised by the numbers. Last year, 98 CUPE members in the school district filed violent-incident reports, compared with 25 teachers, three principals, two supervision aides, two special education assistants, two youth and family workers, one vice-principal and one secretary. (The number of victims is higher than the number of reported assaults because there was more than one victim in some of the incidents.)
Faoro said CUPE 15 was aware of individual incidents, but thought this was the first time overall numbers have been made public.
"We're certainly involved in incidents as they pop up, but looking at it as a whole as you did really steps you back," Faoro said. "We're concerned, but it should be a concern for the entire school board."
Encouraged to report
Chris Harris, president of the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers' Association, said the union has always encouraged teachers to fill out violent-incident reports because it will lead to a plan being created for the problem student.
"No one wants to go to work and get assaulted," Harris said.
"I can't say why this year is worse than other years. You're never going to have no incidents with 56,000 students in the district. The numbers aren't shocking to me, but obviously you want to keep these incidents low."
While it appears no one has found a definite reason why violent incidents are rising, union officials and child advocates said they suspect provincial underfunding of public education has chipped away at supports for students with social, emotional, behavioural and mental health challenges.
They say the number of student support workers has been reduced and most are hired on an hourly basis from "school bell to school bell," leaving them no time to consult with experts or read behavioural plans, which provide strategies to deal with potentially disruptive students. There are long waiting lists for district experts to work with individual students to create behavioural plans.
"When Vancouver is looking in the next month at cutting back $17 million, this reinforces our point you cannot cut any more front-line staff out of the system," Faoro said. "If you do, there will be an increase in the numbers of violent incidents. This is a message for the provincial government."
The education ministry responded that despite complaints about underfunding, education budgets have been increasing. Vancouver's funding has gone up by nearly $100 million in the past decade while enrolment has fallen by 3,000 students. The total funding for all 60 school districts this year will rise by $112 million, the ministry stated.
But Bacchus called that "smoke and mirrors."
"The costs do go up because most of our costs are out of our control," she said. "We have salary increases, which the province negotiates, and they'll increase pension plan benefits, and there's inflationary costs as well, all beyond the control of the school board. The funding in actual dollars has increased, but not at the same pace as the costs of education."
Bacchus said her board has not reduced the number of student support workers because they are seen as a priority, but that the needs of students have increased and grown more complex over the years.
The ministry's communications branch -- which declined to provide a named spokesperson -- said violence is the responsibility of school districts. It said legislation passed in 2007 requires all school districts to have codes of conduct, and that the ministry has published a guide to aid them.
Faoro said it's unacceptable for violence at this level to occur in the workplace, and predicted it will become a bargaining issue in contract talks.
Harris said the best way to prevent "negative behaviour" is with support plans for challenging students in place -- and followed.
Child advocate and retired teacher Barb Laird said she recalls many examples of a child's support plan not being followed. As a result, the child may act out negatively and be blamed for it, and no one looks at how the system may have failed the child, she said.
"It's a huge issue," Laird said. "If you take the time to put a behavioural plan in place, train everyone involved and use it every time, these incidents wouldn't be happening. No one is saying these kids should be disruptive, but make sure you aren't setting the kids up for failure."
She said a recent Alberta school study found that of 16,000 files of behaviourally challenging students in that province, 80 per cent were found to have low IQs of 55 to 75. While no similar study has been done in B.C., Laird said she suspects fetal alcohol syndrome and cognitive problems play a role.
"They don't get the idea of consequences. They need different kinds of strategies," she said, adding that problems occur when staff are inexperienced and have no training on how to handle behaviourally challenging students.
Ambushed in class
Anne Guthrie-Warman, president of the Vancouver Secondary Teachers' Association, said she knows of one case this year in which the teacher wasn't given the student's behaviour plan and the young man later had a violent outburst in the classroom. She said she has dealt with other cases of school administrations withholding such information to protect a student's privacy.
"If you don't know what the issue is, you may not know how to handle the situation.
All those [behavioural support] plans need to be with the teacher at the beginning of the year," Guthrie-Warman said.
She said overcrowded classrooms and not enough support workers are likely contributing factors. The union takes the position that a teacher has the right to refuse to return to a classroom if he or she fears a student could be violent.
Harris said he believes that generally, the people looking after students are well trained, but acknowledged the job of a student support worker can be extremely stressful and that there is a "very high absence rate" associated with that position.
As a result, he said, it's been a challenge for the school district to find replacements when support workers call in sick.
"If the student support worker doesn't come, these incidents [of violence] can happen. The safety of the student is paramount, but there's not enough bodies. Now we not only have the learning situation compromised, but the safety for those students who have a plan is compromised. We might have less violent incidents if the government properly funded public education to the level it needs so these kids are supported."
Parent Jody Edman is all too familiar with a lack of proper supports in the classroom. She said her 11-year-old-son Zachary did well for four years in elementary school, but his troubles began when his full-time student support worker was reduced to halftime and he was placed with an inexperienced teacher who didn't follow his behaviour support plan, such as providing him break times to help alleviate stress. Zachary, who is adopted, has fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, learning disabilities and an attachment disorder. But he was left alone without aide support at recess and lunch and then blamed for acting out, Edman said.
"He was being left alone to manage social interactions on his own and couldn't. He got in trouble in October 2009 when he started throwing rocks and hit another child. There were reasons for his behaviour, but the school unfortunately labelled him. ...
"There's a herd mentality, and the more Zachary did things, the less people he had on his side. He became someone no one wanted to be around," she said.
She said after the rock-throwing incident, Zachary was suspended for one day and the principal complained he was taking up a lot of resources.
All school districts in the province have cut back on hours for student support workers as provincial funding has decreased, said Bill Pegler, CUPE's regional coordinator of the kindergarten to Grade 12 student support workers.
Pegler said that, combined with a decline in the number of students receiving an official designation, has put stress on the system.
He said as the system is overloaded, the front-line workers take on unpaid work. Vancouver student support workers average 2.8 hours of unpaid work weekly, according to a 2008 CUPE survey in the Vancouver school district. Sixty per cent of survey respondents said the extra work involved dealing with problematic behaviour of students at the end of the day or during break periods.
kpemberton@vancouversun.com
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