NDP calls for school safety plan amid 'urgent and growing' violence

The provincial NDP is calling on Ontario's education minister to implement an emergency school safety plan amid what it calls an "urgent and growing" problem of violence against educators and students in the province's classrooms.

At a news conference at Queen's Park on Tuesday, NDP MPPs and education union representatives blamed underfunding and a lack of student supports both inside and outside classrooms for "unprecedented levels" of violence in schools.

"Our kids need and deserve a safe place to learn, but this school year has picked up right where last year ended — with classrooms disrupted daily by violent incidents. Our children are witnessing and sometimes experiencing kicking, hitting and biting," said NDP MPP Chandra Pasma, the party's education critic.

"Their classrooms are regularly being evacuated, and students and teachers alike are learning to dodge flying items. This can be traumatizing for our children, but I think equally seriously, it's becoming normalized for our children," she added.

Pasma said a surge in school violence in recent years is adding to burnout for education workers, leading some to leave the profession "due to the physical and psychological harms they are experiencing."

The NDP says a plan to address violence in schools should include:

• Funding to hire additional qualified staff, including mental health professionals, education assistants, child and youth workers, and other education workers.
• Funding for comprehensive training for all workers and supervisors.
• A sector-specific regulation for education under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
• A permanent provincial health and safety working group to review and adapt current policies regarding workplace violence in the education sector.
• A single provincewide online reporting system for violent incidents and data collection to understand the full scope of the problem.

The NDP plans to table a motion calling on the government to act on its recommendations when the legislature resumes in late October, Pasma said.

Edyta McKay, spokesperson for the minister of education, told CBC News in a statement that Ontario students and staff deserve to feel safe in school environments.

"For the 2024/25 school year we've provided school boards with $29 billion in education funding that includes $123 million to support schools in the implementation of programs, and initiatives on student safety, as well as critical safety infrastructure funding for security upgrades," she said. 

"Since 2018, we've increased student mental health supports by 577 per cent and added an additional 900 education workers across the province. We have and we will continue to increase funding in education every single year of our mandate."

A 2023 survey conducted for the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) found 77 per cent of members reported experiencing or witnessing violence against school staff. That figure rose to 86 per cent when limited to ETFO members working in special education.

In recent years, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) has repeatedly called on the province to increase funding for anti-violence training programs and the hiring of mental health support staff in high schools. 

Meanwhile, Pasma said a rise in violence among youth more generally is making its way into some school communities. Tuesday's news conference, for example, came one day after a 16-year-old boy was shot and injured in the parking lot of a Scarborough high school.

Pasma said a lack of youth programming outside of school settings is partly responsible, putting a burden on educators and school staff to fill the gap.

"When there's no support in the community ... then the school becomes the only form of support. And so these kids are becoming frustrated because the teachers, the education workers, the mental health professionals and child and youth workers, they don't have the time and the capacity to deal with every single problem that's not being dealt with outside the school," she told reporters.

"And so we're seeing the inevitable spillover."