B.C. boy only attending school twice weekly due to educational assistant shortage

Ashley Gardner knew it might be challenging to get her son Daniel enrolled in public school.

The five-year-old, who loves to sing and dance, is blind, and has autism and epilepsy. So Gardner spent months communicating with the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district in the lead up to September about how to ensure her son would be accommodated when he started school.

She said she was assured Daniel would have a dedicated educational assistant in the classroom from day one – but that changed the Friday before he was supposed to begin kindergarten.

“I was told that there are no EAs available to support my son to be able to attend with his peers on the first day of school,” said Gardner.

The district told Gardner that Daniel would share an EA with another student, but that means he can only attend school twice per week.

“I was hopping mad,” said Gardner, who also lives with a disability. “I was just shocked. I know a lot of people had told me that, you know, there are challenges and barriers with the public education system – but I didn’t think a somebody as organized as I was would have been in this situation with my son.”

Gardner said the province is required to provide public school education to every student, no matter their disability.

“We are not asking all of the able-bodied children to make a sacrifice so those resources can be distributed. It’s only my child with a disability that is being told he has to have less of an education than his peers,” said Gardner.

CUPE 606, the union that represents educational assistants in Nanaimo, is saddened but not surprised the EA shortage has become so dire that students like Daniel can’t attend school full time.

“We've been beating this drum for quite a few years now, because we've seen it this coming down the pipe. Recruitment and retention of EAs is impossible right now,” said CUPE 606 president Jeff Virtanen, who pointed out most EAs are only offered a maximum of 26 hours of work per week.

“The real big factor is the affordability crisis, nobody wants 26-hour jobs. And it's unfortunate, because it's such challenging but very rewarding work.”

Gardner said she understands why it’s hard to attract and keep EAs, adding: “How can you expect somebody to be incentivized to provide a service if they're not earning a living wage?”

She wants to see more funding invested in educational assistants.

Virtanen agrees. “Like anything, I think it starts at the top. I think the ministry does need to fund school districts better. Money’s always the answer, right? But it's not just that. It's also, I think, a shift in the way that management thinks,” he said, suggesting more hours and better working conditions would make the job more attractive.

The superintendent of the Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools, Piet Langstaat, spoke to CTV News about the challenge of hiring and retaining qualified EAs for students with special needs, but said he could not discuss Daniel specifically.

“We want to have all the supports in place on day one for all of our students, so they can enter school just like any other child enters school. And so we work very hard to strive to do that, and I can fully understand the frustration of parents when that doesn’t happen. But I do want to ensure that we are all on the same page,” said Langstaat.

He said the challenge often lies with training EAs to safely work with students with complex educational and medical needs.

“Our EAs don’t have that medical training, so we need to collaborate with our partners in health to be able to provide that training for our EAs. And it’s challenging,” said Langstaat. “Sometimes that means a highly trained EA that has that medical training is being asked to support more than one student while we wait for more EAs to be trained.”

Until Daniel is assigned a full time educational assistant, he can only go to school part time, which is an unexpected challenge for his working parents. “I don't know when my son will be able to go to school full time with his peers. All we know for now is it's just Thursday and Friday, indefinitely,” said Gardner.

Langstaat offered to speak to Gardner privately about how to get Daniel into the classroom full time, and she plans to take him up on that invitation. She said she won’t rest until her son is in the classroom five days a week.

“I don't know how much he is comprehending it right now, but I keep telling him that I'm going to make it right for him. And I'm not going to stop until I do,” she said.