SOCIAL JUSTICE
Budget cuts in 2020 left many classrooms without the educational assistants teachers often rely on. PHOTO: LEGACY IMAGES
Budget woes mean Alberta EA’s are MIA Millions in budget cuts and mandatotry COVID-19 restraints have caused big shifts in classroom help CHLOE MACEACHERN cmaceachern@cjournal.ca
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shley Torpe’s most powerful memory from her career as an educational assistant is a simple one: the first time one of her students said her name. The boy had a learning disability. So Torpe worked closely with him. But, up until February of last year, he referred to her simply as “teacher.” Torpe was at the playground when he turned to her and said, “You know I know your name, right?” It was this simple gesture that made Torpe feel fulfilled. These kinds of connections with students make educational assistants an integral part of Albertan classrooms. But those positions are often vulnerable to budget cuts, something every school board in the province is familiar with. The United Conservative Party has put those boards under an even greater financial strain at a time when the
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pandemic has made those assistants even more important. Wing Li, the communications director for Support Our Students [SOS], describes the role of EA’s as giving “one to one attention and support” to students who may need it. A 2018 thesis by a Minot State University student also found EA’s play a major role in providing all students equal and accessible education. In that study, which focused on the Saskatoon Public School Board, one EA was quoted as saying, “Educational assistants play a vital role not only in the education of special needs students, but also the students falling through the cracks in the educational system.” That explains why Torpe, who works in an elementary school in Wainwright, Alta., says, “The kids do have an EA in their class, you can see them going leaps and bounds [farther] than the kids that don’t have an EA to help them.”
However, despite how essential teaching assistants can be, school boards sometimes don’t have the money to pay for them. Typically, the majority of their budget will go towards staffing, whether it’s teachers themselves or support staff like EA’s and custodians. According to Schilling, each board will have its own differences in terms of how it allocates that money. That means, even at the best of times, schools don’t always get the number of EA’s they need or want. Torpe says in her own school, teachers are often told, “We don’t have the funds, we don’t have it in the budget, we can’t afford to bring another EA on.” Alberta Teachers Association President Jason Schilling says situations where EA’s are lost, can be “detrimental to [students] learning.”
