LANE KRAINYK
Opinions Writer

The Sask Party is proposing a cut of educational assistants by 75 per cent over the course of the next seven years.

For anyone unfamiliar with the position, an educational assistant is a person employed to work one-on-one with a child with special needs in the classroom setting.

This position was created in an attempt to integrate children with special needs into the classroom setting while ensuring that both the special needs student and others in the class could be educated in an optimal learning environment. The Sask Party suggests that the needs of the children who lose their educational assistants will be met by increased hiring of psychologists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologist and nurses.

Really?

I have worked with enough special needs children to know that their educational assistants serve a vital role.

Is a psychologist going to help a child with Down Syndrome heat up their lunch and get books out of their locker? Is an occupational therapist going to spend an entire day at the side of a child with autism, helping express the deep intelligence of a child who has trouble communicating? Are nurses going to go to special needs track and field days and hold the hands of special needs children as they run around the track or do the long jump? Is a speech-language pathologist going to help a high needs child go to the bathroom?

I am not minimizing the importance of psychologists, speech-language pathologists, nurses and occupational therapists. I am arguing that educational assistants play a critical role that cannot be filled by people who hold professional degrees. Not only are educational assistants easier to recruit and cheaper to employ, but they work directly with special needs children, allowing them to function and thrive in the classroom setting.

School districts around the province have been instructed to drastically cut positions over the next number of years. For rural districts, where they may be only one or two special needs children in the school, this is impossible. Will the government send a psychologist to Oungre or Aberdeen or Radville? I don’t think so. I have never found the government to be so out of touch with reality.

I am shocked at the lack of insight in this policy proposal. By spending each and every day with the child they are paired with, educational assistants cultivate relationships built on compassion and trust with both the child and the child’s family. Educational assistants are irreplaceable.

Fortunately, the same can’t be said for provincial governments.

UPDATE: The Sask Party has since backed off its proposal to cut up to 75 per cent of educational assistant positions.
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