Several years ago, Robin Michael-Gagne, an educational assistant with the Edmonton Public School Board, suffered an injury that put her off work for months.
It was the second day of school. She was working in a classroom with students on the autism spectrum, and one boy needed to use the washroom. He asked his teacher several times if he could go, but the teacher didn’t understand what he was saying. The boy became frustrated and desperate. He knew Michael-Gagne would help him, so he went to her.
He grabbed Michael-Gagne by her arm and lifted her off her stool and into the air to get her attention. He didn’t know his own strength. Michael-Gagne’s arm dislocated from her shoulder, and all the ligaments in the back of her shoulder tore.
“He loved me, and I loved him, but that’s the kind of love we got,” Michael-Gagne says of the situation.
The injury put her off work from September until February.
Overworked and Burning Out
Since January 13, support staff at the Edmonton Public School Board have been on strike. They’re one of five districts that are currently striking. And for good reason. Educational assistants put their bodies on the line daily to protect children, but their pay doesn’t allow them to pay their bills. Their pay doesn’t show how demanding their jobs are.
Behaviour management is only meant to be a small part of educational assistants’ job descriptions. But all staff in schools are overstretched these days, and children’s behaviour is getting more challenging.
“I am supposed to be helping educate these children so they can become dynamic human beings. Instead, I’m their therapist. I have to do hostage negotiation daily,” Michael-Gagne tells TheRockies.Life.
Michael-Gagne’s story is one of hundreds, if not thousands.
Lou Arab, who works for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), tells TheRockies.Life that staff are “burning out, both because of stresses at work and because of stresses in life that are compounded by their low wages.”
The CUPE, which Edmonton Public’s educational assistants are a part of, expects that more school boards will go on strike if educational support workers’ pay doesn’t go up, and soon.
Education Needs More Funding
Alberta’s education system doesn’t receive enough money to go around. Alberta spends the least amount of money per child on education of any province in Canada. We spend over $2,000 less per child every year than Nova Scotia, the province with the highest funding.
Looking at educational support workers’ wages shows just how much more our province could stand to spend on education. Their average salary is $34,500 per year. They’ve been offered a meager 2.75 percent raise, their first in ten years.
“At Edmonton Public, there’s a 10% vacancy rate among support worker positions. This is because there are fewer and fewer people willing to work for these wages,” Arab says.
Even if all these positions were filled, there would be too few educational assistants to support all the children with high learning needs.
Michael-Gagne is one of four educational assistants in her school of 450 children. If the number of educational assistants in her school was doubled, situations like the one that put her on medical leave for six months would not happen.
Inflation Hits Hard
Our school system needs more funding if children are to get the support they need to take their places as tomorrow’s leaders. Current support workers need to be paid a wage that allows them to stay at their jobs, and the province needs to increase the number of support workers in every school.
Still, educational support workers are only striking for higher wages.
For Michael-Gagne, and for many other education assistants, more money would go a long way in making her job more doable. It would mean she wouldn’t have to work a second job.
She’s lucky. Her six children are grown and out of the house. Her husband pays the mortgage and the gas bills. Still, she has her own bills to pay, and working as an educational assistant isn’t enough to cover her share of the finances.
At the end of her day at school, she runs home and scarfs food down. Then, she heads to her evening job as a home care worker. She’s tired, but she’s responsible for buying the groceries. Working a second job is the only way to do that.
Lately, though, she says that she and her husband have been eating unhealthy because she doesn’t make enough money for healthy groceries.
“Clerks at Superstore are making more money stocking shelves than I am, and they never have to worry about their personal safety,” she says.
