Mom and student protest suspension
‘Last resort’ move came after special-needs student struck educational assistant, teacher
Ivan Hooper has a bird’s-eye view of kids playing in the yard of his Hamilton elementary school.
He’s in his mom’s highrise condo, but not in Queen Victoria Elementary.
The 12-year-old is serving a fiveday suspension for slapping an educational assistant in the face and punching a teacher in the shoulder last week.
Ivan isn’t your average student. He has autism, obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome.
That’s why his mom argues Ivan’s five-day suspension is unfair. “You can’t discipline autism out of a child,” Julie Johnson said Monday.
Public board education director Manny Figueiredo said suspending special-needs students isn’t the preferred option.
“We always have to consider mitigating circumstances for students with special needs. So suspension is a last resort.”
But the safety of staff and students is also important, he said.
The goal of the suspension isn’t to mete out discipline, said board chair Todd White.
Rather, it’s meant to provide time to come up with a better work plan for the student, he said.
“We care a lot about Ivan in this case,” White said.
“We’re doing whatever we can to address the situation.”
Ivan says the trouble started in his homeroom Wednesday morning when he dropped his lunch on the floor.
That made a loud noise, which made students stare at him, he wrote in a letter to his school.
“My anxiety made me run, and I went to the office.”
Ivan, who works in a separate room with EAs, says he was then provoked and lashed out in response.
Johnson argues his two EAs aren’t versed in proper de-escalation techniques.
“There are obvious triggers for why it happened.”
White said staff “did act appropriately,” but declined to go into specifics due to privacy concerns.
Ivan and his mom led a rally near the school Monday to protest his suspension and show support for other special-needs kids.
He is among the 25 per cent of the public board’s roughly 49,000 students receiving special education services.
The board has dedicated $77.9 million to special education out of its overall annual budget of $540.7million.
The demands for special-needs education have increased in recent years with more families moving to Hamilton to access its excellent medical services, Figueiredo said.
Reports of physical aggression against educational assistants in Hamilton public elementary and secondary schools have also spiked.
In the 2015-16 school year, there were 1,621 reports involving such outbursts as pushing, pulling, head-butting, scratching and kicking. In 2016-17, there were 2,239 reports, according to union figures.
Schools are understaffed and educational assistants have too much on their plate, says John Morris, president of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 527.
“It comes down to providing adequate funding to hire enough staff so all children receive the education that they are entitled to, and to reduce the amount of risk in the workplace.”
The Ministry of Education says it has boosted special education funding to $2.86 billion, a 76 per cent increase since 2003. It has also increased the number of EAs by more than 6,300.
The Hamilton public board employs 657 EAs, with 13 allocated to Queen Victoria.
Johnson has struggled to find the right situation for her son. But last year, she says he worked well with a supply teacher at Queen Victoria.
Things have deteriorated this year with the EAs, Johnson said, noting Ivan’s time at school has been cut to 100 minutes a day.
Figueiredo said the Education Act allows boards to shorten instruction time for students identified as “exceptional” if they’re struggling.