“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 North Bay schools

NORTH BAY, 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 Near North DSB, Nipissing-Perry Sound Catholic DSB, Conseil Scolaire Catholique Franco Nord and the Conseil Scolaire Public du Nord-Est de l’Ontario. 

 The CUPE-OSBCU survey included over 12,000 respondents from across Ontario, with over 300 from North Bay area school boards. The survey points to a crisis of understaffing in all classifications, causing insufficient supports for students and staff in schools and the North Bay community. 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 North Bay area.

CUPE locals 2799, 1165, and 4865 represent over 580 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, Near Noth DSB has faced a minimum of a $11 million cut to real per-pupil funding, Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board faced a real per-pupil cut of over $3 million, Scolaire Catholique Franco Nord faced a real per-pupil cut of over $2 million, and Conseil Scolaire Public du Nord-Est de l’Ontario has faced a real per-pupil cut of $2 million.

Many education workers at these school boards say they frequently face violent incidents at their workplace, with over 30 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.  

Mitch Gagnon, President of CUPE 4865: The government’s lack of funding has critically diminished support services essential for classrooms at Conseil Scolaire Publique du Nord-Est de l’Ontario, leading to increased strain on support staff and students. This shortfall not only affects the availability of resources and specialized assistance, but also hampers the overall educational environment, hindering students’ ability to thrive and educators’ capacity to provide effective instruction.

Mrs. Paquette, President of CUPE 2799: The Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic DSB and Conseil Scolaire Catholique Franco Nord are severely understaffed. We need significantly more workers in all classifications. Our members are often cutting corners to get the job done because they have to. They are given way more work than they can possibly finish in a shift and our schools are not being cleaned and taken care of the way they should be. Our secretaries are also dealing with overwork and are taking care of students who are sent to the office when they should be focusing on their own work. There are no school nurses at the Conseil Scolaire Catholique Franco Nord, so the school secretaries are expected to help students with minor medial problems, like bandaging cuts and scrapes. And they’re not trained for that. It’s just not sustainable. 

Trevor Russell, President of CUPE 1165: The lack of funding for public education in Ontario has caused major understaffing issues in all job classifications of Local 1165 at Near North DSB. Our members are experiencing heightened situations of violence at work because there are not enough bodies in the room. Our clerical staff have way too much work on their plate to get done in a seven hour work day, and often they are working an extra hour a day – for free – to get it done. Some clerical workers are even coming in on the weekends, completely unpaid, to finish their work. And our maintenance workers are getting injured on the job because they’re dealing with workloads that are impossible to finish within their shifts. Our workers are stressed out and burned out. This has to stop.

Numbers at a Glance: 

• The Near North DSB has faced a minimum of a $11 million cut to real per-pupil funding, Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board faced a real per-pupil cut of over $3 million, Scolaire Catholique Franco Nord faced a real per-pupil cut of over $2 million, and Conseil Scolaire Public du Nord-Est de l’Ontario has faced a real per-pupil cut of $2 million for the 2024-2025 school year. 
• 38 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 15 Full-Time Equivalent jobs worth of unpaid work are done by CUPE members.  
• 77 percent of respondents say they feel stress due to an excessive workload.
• 59 percent of all respondents say they experience violent or disruptive incidents in their work area. 84 percent Educational Assistants or Child and Youth Workers experience violent or disruptive incidents in their workplace, 30 percent say it happens every day.
• 82 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. 

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For more information, contact: 

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