“Ontario’s school boards are in severe crisis”: Survey of 12,000 CUPE education workers finds extreme underfunding and understaffing has caused widespread violence, burnout and lack of supports for students in Kingston and Belleville area schools

KINGSTON, ON –(COMMUNITYWIRE)– A recent survey of Ontario education workers including Educational Assistants, Early Childhood Educators, Child and Youth workers, custodians, maintenance and trades workers, and school secretaries represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU) shows that a severe crisis in underfunding has led to extreme understaffing, students’ needs going unmet, and increased violence in the Limestone, Hastings and Prince Edward, and Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Boards.     

The CUPE-OSBCU survey included over 12,000 respondents from across Ontario, with close to 600 from Kingston and Belleville school boards. The survey points to a crisis of understaffing in all classifications, causing insufficient supports for students and staff in schools and the Kingston and Belleville communities. School offices are overburdened by increasing demands, school cleaning suffers, and repairs are delayed or go undone.  

Read the full CUPE-OSBCU Services Survey report for the Kingston and Belleville areas.   

CUPE locals 1480, 1022, and 1479 represent over 2600 members, including Educational Assistants, Child and Youth Workers, Registered Early Childhood Educators, secretarial staff, IT, custodial, maintenance and trades workers, student supervisors and other educational workers.      

This school year alone, Limestone District School Board has faced a minimum of a $22 million cut to real per-pupil funding, Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board saw a real per-pupil cut of $16 million and Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board has faced a real per-pupil cut of $13 million.  

Many education workers at these school boards say they frequently face violent incidents at their workplace, with over 56 percent of Educational Assistants and Child and Youth Workers experiencing a violent incident every day.        

This severe underfunding leaves students and workers at risk because there are too few staff in schools. It also means students have their learning environments disrupted on a regular basis, creating an environment that is far from conducive to having the highest quality of education.      

CUPE education workers across the province are calling on the Ford government to immediately increase school board funding, adequately staff school boards so that education workers can do their jobs with dignity and respect and address the crisis of violence across Ontario school boards.       

The OSBCU represents more than 57,000 education workers in Ontario.   

Quotes:  

Joe Tigani, President of OSBCU:
It is abundantly clear that the education system in Ontario is at a breaking point. For years, the Conservative government has continued to cut billions of dollars in funding to the education sector, causing extreme understaffing, increased violence against staff and students, and our students’ needs being neglected. There is no question that the Ford government has abandoned the education sector. The Ontario government must increase its investment in students and education workers and address this situation immediately. Students deserve better, parents deserve better, and our education workers deserve better.       

Kerry Webb, President of CUPE 1022: 
We have over 800 members who work as support staff at the Hastings and Prince Edward School Board. Violence, underfunding and understaffing are huge issues within our school board. We’re short staffed in all areas, including Custodial, Clerical, Educational Assistants, IT, library technicians, Designated Early Childhood Educators, Communicative Disorder Assistants, and more. There is a recruitment and retention issue as well, because the wages are low, hours have been reduced, and the workload is unbearable. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in violence that our EAs and clerical staff are subjected to on a daily basis.  We understand it’s not the students’ fault. The services they need are non-existent, inside the schools or outside of them. The Ontario government is failing our education system and our students, and education staff are at a breaking point. 

Brenda Price, President of CUPE 1480: 
Our Local represents over 1300 education workers throughout the Limestone District School Board, including maintenance, caretaking, IT, clerical, Education assistants and Early Childhood Educators, Professional Student Service Personnel, and more. Our members are experiencing frightening levels of violence at work. It’s completely unacceptable. They’re expected to wear protective equipment, like Kevlar, to work because the students are so violent. Our Educational Assistants and Early Childhood Educators do not get the one-on-one time with students that they need, and their shifts are only 6 hours a day which is way too little get all of their work done, so most of them end up working many unpaid hours to finish it. Our IT department workers are doing more work with less money. Maintenance and trades workers are doing more repairs due to the violence in the schools. The clerical worker positions have been cut back, but they’re still expected to do the same amount, if not more work, with less hours. Our caretakers are experiencing a lot more violence on the job, and way more work than is physically possible for them to do in one shift. It’s a mess. We need way more funding for public education, higher wages, and we need to hire significantly more staff for all positions.  

Liz James, President of CUPE 1479:
Liz James, President of CUPE 1479, highlights a critical situation in the education system under the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board. Since 2018, she has observed a decline in working and learning conditions, attributing this deterioration to the policies of the Ford government. She emphasizes that a lack of qualified staff is affecting the quality of education, particularly for students with higher educational and behavioural needs who are not receiving adequate support. For many reasons. The emotional trauma and burnout and physical safety of staff is also a pressing concern, with reports of violence against predominantly female workers leading to injuries and many long-term and life changing disabilities.  With the current funding model for education, students are never going to get the help or support they deserved in this province. This problem affects every single student in every school, no matter what their individual learning needs are. James calls for immediate action to hire more staff across all job classifications and for increased funding for public education to restore a supportive and safe environment for both students and educators. 

Numbers at a Glance:      

• The Limestone District School Board has faced a minimum of a $22.74 million cut to real per-pupil funding in 2024-25. Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board saw a real per-pupil cut of $16.98 million and Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board has faced a real per-pupil cut of $13.12 million.  
• 63 percent of members say they do unpaid work for the school boards, effectively subsidizing schools to make up for the lack of funding. Extrapolating the amount of unpaid work reported to the entire membership of these locals, an equivalent of 76.4 Full-Time Equivalent jobs worth of unpaid work are done by CUPE members.       
• 89 percent of respondents say they feel stress due to an excessive workload.     
• 83 percent of all respondents say they experience violent or disruptive incidents in their work area. 98 percent Educational Assistants or Child and Youth Workers experience violent or disruptive incidents in their workplace, 57 percent say it happens every day.   
• 84 percent of respondents say there are not enough people employed in their own job classification at the school board or in their school. 86 percent of respondents said that services for students, staff, or the school community would be improved with more staff in their classification.  

-30- 

For more information, contact:  

Shannon Carranco, CUPE Communications
scarranco@cupe.ca 
514-703-8358