Union representing support services personnel asking school board to rethink potential job cuts

The Professional Support Services Personnel (PSSP), part of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation is asking the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board to rethink its proposed 2023-24 budget that includes the reduction of “extra staff” in schools.

District 29 PSSP President Cindy Waite says they have sent a letter to trustees asking them to reconsider the cuts before passing the budget.

Waite says their union currently represents 37.8 Full Time Equivalent employees but that number will drop to 32 if the proposed budget is approved.

“There’ll be one less speech language pathologist, one less member of our psycho-educational services team and actually 3.8 less child and youth workers. Our school board has over 15,000 students so basically for psych and speech, you will have two people responsible for the whole entire school board.”

Waite says their team has done amazing work considering they are so small, but cutting jobs will only spread the remaining employees even thinner.

She adds a recent survey taken by the Association of School Board Speech Language Pathologists looking at the number of speech language pathologists per student showed that HPEDSB has less than half the average number of speech pathologists per student.

And, while some people will turn to the private sector to find help for their children, not everyone has that option.

“And not everybody has the funding to pay for that. So, it’s actually creating an issue with people who don’t have coverage for these private assessments that they can’t afford. It actually adds to the system and adds to the wait lists.”

Waite says making students wait longer for services they absolutely need negatively impacts not only their development but their mental health.

“Our speech pathologists and our psycho-educational team and our CYWs, they really support children with mental health. And, if you know, if you aren’t doing well mental health wise, you not available to learn so it really does all impact each other.”

Waite says it is not completely the board’s fault, as the Ministry of Education needs to do a better job of recognizing the importance of the professional support service personnel but they also believe the board does have some room within its own budget to prioritize the services.

Trustees are expected to give the budget final approval at their next meeting June 19.