Safe Staff, Safe Schools: Workers in public schools demand action from provincial government

Over 5,000 workers in Nova Scotia's public schools are demanding action from the provincial government on issues affecting school support staff, students, and their families. The start of the new school year is already demonstrating the urgency to address understaffing, high workloads, and other factors contributing to the crisis of violence in Nova Scotia's public schools.

"Just a few weeks in and we're hearing from members, from parents, from folks across the province about how these issues are impacting them," said Nelson Scott, Chair of the Nova Scotia School Board Council of Unions and President of CUPE 5050. "But the government won't even talk to us about province-wide steps to fix these issues, and it's our communities that are paying the price."

Workers are already experiencing violent incidents at the Halifax Regional Centre for Education, and 22 bus routes were just dropped at the Chignecto-Central Regional Centre for Education because of understaffing.

"The government just announced four new schools in the HRM-which of course we need--but their timeline just doesn't work. By the time they have the land and build the sites, we'll be asking for two or three times that many new schools," said Nan McFadgen, CUPE Nova Scotia President. "There are more and more students every year and the current infrastructure can't support them, not to mention the negative impact that increasing class sizes has on the workload for school support staff, the quality of our kids' learning environment, and the risk for violent incidents."

After turning a blind eye to the issue for years, the Department of Early Childhood Education and Development (EECD) has finally acknowledged communications from school support staff on the issue of violence in public schools, confirming for all Nova Scotians that they have been aware of this crisis and the research available from CUPE, and still took no action.

Following the release of a damning report from the Nova Scotia Auditor General, CUPE Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia School Board Council of Unions released Safe Staff, Safe Schools: A worker-led review of violence in Nova Scotia's public schools, with the goal of sharing information with parents, and the public, so that workers and the schools and communities they serve can come together to demand action from the provincial government.

"If the provincial government wants policies, strategies, or solutions to address violence in schools, well we have proposals on the table to address understaffing, workplace safety procedures, and reporting of violent incidents," said Scott, "I invite the Department of Education, the Regional Centres for Education, and the conseil scolaire acadien provincial to consider the solutions that are right in front of them."