Hamilton public schools see spike in staff injuries from student attacks

The return to in-person learning at Hamilton public schools saw a spike in student attacks on staff requiring first aid or health care, with educational assistants and child and youth care practitioners the most frequent victims.

A report for the 2021-22 school year presented to trustees at their Jan. 23 human resources committee meeting shows 139 violent incidents against staff required first aid and 51 needed some form of health care.

That's the most in both categories since 2014-15, the first year for which statistics were made public in an initial October 2018 report to trustees. The previous highs had been in 2018-19, when 96 incidents required first aid and 44 needed health care.

Forty-three of violent incidents in 2021-22 resulted in time off from work, second only to 2018-19, when there were 52.

In all, there were 1,719 violent incidents in 2021-22, which included 1,518 where there were no injuries. Students in kindergarten to Grade 3 accounted for 52 per cent of the incidents.

Human resources superintendent Jamie Nunn said the board is very cautious" about comparing year-over-year statistics because of variables like the periods of remote learning in 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to COVID-19.

But he said the full reopening of schools in September 2021 created challenges for students, especially in younger grades where they had limited or no exposure to learning in a classroom setting.

Kindergarten students accounted for 22 per cent of all violent incidents in 2021-22 - the same as the previous year - but the share in Grade 1 doubled to 11 per cent.

Certainly, we are seeing the challenges of our youth, challenges they had with returning to in-person learning - students who have experienced some challenges by being introduced into new environments," Nunn said.

We've heard of students who have, like adults, had challenges to have access to health care and the necessary resources in the community post-pandemic."

Nunn said the province doesn't require violent incidents without injuries to be tracked, but the board does so to address potential problems before they escalate.

This includes using different funding sources to reduce class sizes and add classroom supports like certified behaviour analysts and an extra 17 educational assistants and child and youth care practitioners.

A pandemic recovery plan also largely focuses on primary grades, based on the violent incident reports and what we're hearing from teachers, from principals, from our union partners," he added.

Peggy Blair, superintendent of specialized services, outlined a variety of intervention strategies to address violent incidents, including working with small groups of students and having specialist teams assess primary classes in some cases.

We know that if we can intervene early, it always pays dividends," she said.

Trustee Todd White said the frequent monitoring of violent incidents and staff strategies give him confidence the board can intervene in real time" to put needed measures in place.

There's a lot of great work in this," he said. You guys are the experts and you're doing a brilliant job."