The Thames Valley District School Board is not suspending students as often as before the pandemic, but educators say that doesn’t mean violence and disruptive behavior has decreased.

In fact, they say the opposite is true.

CBC News spoke to unions representing elementary and middle school teachers, as well as support staff and educational assistants, after a report was released this week showing suspension rates across the board have fallen, most significantly at elementary school level, in Grades 4-8.

The board reports the numbers as a percentage rate based on enrollment. In 2022-2023, the most recent school year for which data is available, when there were about 82,000 students, the school board suspended five percent of students. That was down from a pre-pandemic level of seven percent in the 2018-2019 school year, at a time when fewer students were enrolled.

The provincial suspension rate in both 2018-2019 and 2022-2023 was four per cent.

Despite these figures, educators in London report feeling unsafe in schools as they deal with children and teenagers who have missed key developmental milestones and have trouble regulating their emotions and behaviour.

“It’s not that the violence doesn’t exist, it’s not that the behaviors don’t exist. It just means that there is a policy or a practice where we no longer suspend students,” said Rebecca Avey, president of CUPE Local 7575, which represents educational assistants on the public school board .

“The whole problem is that we’re just triaging and just surviving. We don’t have time to stop and think. It’s hard, when you’re in the middle of a garbage fire, to think about what might work.”

In 2019, then-Chief Education Officer Mark Fisher promised to reduce the school board’s suspension rates, which were higher than the provincial average, particularly at the elementary level. In 2018-19, around 2.5% of children were suspended, but in Thames Valley 7.3% of children were suspended.

In 2022-23, the provincial number is unchanged, but the Thames Valley number has dropped to four per cent.

Fisher introduced progressive discipline and required teachers and principals to try new ways of intervening in situations before suspending students.

Annoying behavior

But student behavior is a growing concern, said John Bernans, president of the union that represents high school teachers. “How do we correct behavior if we don’t suspend? I think teachers are frustrated by the lack of effective tools.”

Elementary suspension rates have dropped significantly. Secondary school dropout rates have dropped negligibly, figures show:

It’s up to principals whether a student is suspended, said Dennis Wright, the school board’s superintendent of safe schools, who presented the suspension data to administrators Tuesday.

But because of Tucker’s efforts to reduce suspensions, some principals felt they had to get the superintendent’s approval before suspending a student, union leaders say.

“There was a certain approach that the previous administration had to student conduct and consequence issues, and since then there has been a shift in attitude and a recognition that schools are in a tough spot,” he said. said Craig Smith, president of the union representing elementary teachers.

Former education director Bill Tucker took over the board and said Tuesday that principals don’t need anyone’s permission to suspend.

“We have to let the principals be the principals of their schools,” he said. “I can tell you that the principals I’m talking to are seeing behaviors they’ve never seen before in elementary and middle schools. Kindergarten children are exhibiting antisocial behaviors because they have missed key pieces of learning due to COVID.”

There are high levels of violence and “unruly behavior” in schools, Smith said.

“We have codes of conduct and expectations about how students should behave and we need to provide, as part of the learning process, consequences for behaviours. I let the pendulum swing to doing less and now I think it’s swinging back. ”

There will also be a greater emphasis on “re-entry meetings,” where the principal meets with a suspended student and a parent or guardian to discuss the offense, Smith said. Those have fallen by the wayside in recent years, he said.

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