Welcome to the 2025-2026 School Year!
I’ve been getting a lot of questions so I thought I would put this out.
- Please remember that you are hourly employees, not salaried. You are only paid for the time that you are scheduled. Don’t work for free, you are not covered for activities that you do outside of your scheduled hours and role (ie coaching, staff meetings that run longer than your hours, etc.).
- Make sure that you are wearing the PPE/safety gear provided. If it does not fit, there isn’t enough or it isn’t suitable, contact your supervisor to have it rectified.
- Make sure you are taking your breaks and your unpaid / uninterrupted lunch. You need this time to decompress and get away from the stress of your job.
- Make sure that you are filling out incident reports every time. If you don’t fill them out, the board assumes that everything is okay, and you don’t need any additional help. If you are attacked by a student (identified or not), it is workplace violence.
- Make sure you are reading safety plans before working with a student. If the student is new, push to have a safety plan put in place if needed.
- If you are required to change a student, make sure you have the proper PPE, supplies and location to work out of. Make sure the location has proper ventilation and a garbage can. Do not change students on the floor.
- It is not your job to get photocopies or supplies for teaching staff. That is why they have prep and planning.
- EA and ECE, you can be asked to supervise your students (JK/K or Identified) during arrival, and dismissal, noon hour and recess duties. They can schedule your breaks/lunch during instructional time. EAs hired before June 30, 2005 are not to do general supervision, EA’s hired after this date are restricted to 30 minutes of general supervision per day.
- EA’s the employer updated the role outline, and you are allowed to go onto busses/vans to help students buckle and unbuckle. Try to get them to be as independent as possible, but if you need to do the buckle up, you can. Make sure that you have proper PPE if needed.
- Secretaries make sure that you are only doing the jobs that are part of your role. If your school doesn’t have a vice principal, it is not your job to take on those responsibilities. Also, it’s not your job to supervise students. They should not be hanging around the office.
Stay safe,
Tracey