Province adding 47 staff to address violence in Nova Scotia’s 373 schools

Violence in schools affects students, staff and teachers. Educators have long requested that the province take this crisis seriously, listen to their needs and commit more resources to address it.

Finally last Wednesday, Oct. 17, the province announced it would be “adding 47 specialized staff to prevent and address violence in Nova Scotia schools” through various pilot programs at a cost of $976,000.

Coming before an anticipated early provincial election call, the announcement says these new resources are “in addition to the thousands of specialized behavioural and other support staff already working in Nova Scotia’s public school system” and are meant to be temporary and assessed before deciding whether to use them province-wide.

Here’s what the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD) has said about the 47 new staff so far:

18 will be term substitute educational and teaching assistants
4 will be student supervisors
5 will be school safety leads, which the department says are similar to security guards
8 will be child and youth care practitioners
12 will be senior teachers specializing in managing classrooms and complex behaviours

Despite this announcement, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, school support staff workers in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike mandate, partly because they don’t think the province is doing enough to address workplace violence.

Peter Day is the president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union. The Coast asked whether 47 staff is enough for the province’s 373 schools. “No,” says Day, but “it’s a start.”

Day says the NSTU, like CUPE, “has been advocating for years about the concerns of violence in our schools.”

He calls the province’s newly announced pilots “incremental steps” that indicate “we’re moving slow but in the right direction.” If these pilots prove successful, he hopes the province will make them “permanent and add additional positions so that every school benefits.”

Where will these 47 new staff and pilot programs be tested? Details are still forthcoming.

In Nova Scotia, eight regional centres for education and a Conseil scolaire acadien provincial are responsible for 373 schools. When announcing this program, Druhan said that RCEs and the CSAP “have provided guidance and direction around where these specific resources are being deployed.”

Druhan said Wednesday that some of the [47] new staff “are in place already; for others, the hiring is still underway.”

The Coast contacted the Halifax Regional Centre for Education and the CSAP to know how many of the 47 new staff they would receive and which pilot programs they had chosen. Each referred us back to the EECD, which provided the following statement on Wednesday, Oct. 23:

“The HRCE is piloting two school-based security guards and two senior teachers specializing in behaviour and classroom management.” The Coast found one active HRCE security guard job posting here. One required competency in the job description is “the ability to utilize non-violent crisis intervention techniques.”

The EECD statement also said the CSAP has “opted to pilot the new senior teacher positions to model effective teaching and classroom management strategies.”

The Coast has requested job postings from the HRCE and CSAP for these senior teacher positions. At the time of publication, it had not received them and could not find them listed online.

Day says he, too, “would like to know more information” about these new staff and pilots but that “anytime you add resources into a school is a positive step.

“I’m hopeful that in the upcoming weeks, we will get information.”

Given the rumours of an early provincial election, could this announcement be intentionally premature? It stands to reason that preventing and addressing school violence will receive significant attention once election season begins.

Whatever role an election is playing, Day credits a recent report from the province’s Auditor General as a reason that violence in schools has been “brought to the forefront.” On June 11, the AG released a report examining incidents of violence in schools and whether those responsible for school safety are doing a good job in addressing and preventing school violence.

Short answer: no. The report concluded there was “an inadequate focus on preventing and addressing violence in schools at the [EECD]” and that “educators [were] not adequately supported to manage violence in their workplace.”

The report found “school violence incidents against students and educators increased provincewide by 60% over the last seven years,” from 17,000 incidents to 27,000, with “roughly 50% occurring in the Halifax Regional Centre for Education.” When measuring violent incidents against enrollment, the CSAP ranked number one, at 28.87%, and the HRCE ranked second, at 25.5%, for 2022-2023.

The auditor general asked school staff, HRCE and CSAP management “what factors they felt contributed to the increase in violent incidents in schools.” Several responses mentioned staffing and supervision shortfalls:

“Not enough support for students who have special learning needs”
“Teachers no longer monitor hallways”
“The sheer number of students within a school”
“Insufficient roles in schools to help educators manage behaviours”
“A lack of support for students who have English as a second language”

“I can tell you right now that schools need more resources—and considerable resources,” says Day. He says school safety is “paramount to the NSTU and…in order to address this properly, class sizes need to be reduced, and we need to give teachers the time that they need to properly meet the complex needs of their students.”

Day says the province has jurisdiction to make those changes now. “If we can tackle those concerns, I think they’ll go a long way to addressing violence.”