SCCOE PARAEDUCATORS’ TESTIMONIALS
SAFE CLASSROOMS NOW!
Paraeducators are getting injured on the job as understaffing puts at risk staff and students.
HAVE YOU BEEN INJURED WHILE ON THE JOB AS A RESULT OF UNDERSTAFFING?
SHARE YOUR STORY (IF YOU WISH) ANONYMOUSLY with Chapter President Sarah Gianocaro: text 669.247.2696 or email sarah.gianocaro@gmail.com so we can anonymously share the reality of our work with the public and management to fight for better working conditions.
“I suffered [large handfuls of hair ripped from my scalp] (image on the left) from a 1:1 student when we were understaffed on May 5, 2022. It took three staff members …to get him off of me. I am still having stress from this incident. And it wasn’t the only [incident]. Not to mention, all the students witnessed it ?” – SCCOE Special Education Paraeducator
“A student at [SCCOE school] drank dish soap today because the class was short-staffed. [No one could watch the student while they were being called to do another task.]”-SCCOE Paraeducator
“School interpreters are showing up in classrooms with braces and tape and pain patches. What kind of message does this send to our students? Our students also often find themselves without an interpreter for a portion of class time because interpreters have to run back and forth between two separate classes to ‘cover.’ This is physically impossible. We cannot be in two places at once, and the students suffer from not having our full focus, not to mention the interpreters deal with guilt.”- SCCOE School Interpreter
“My Special Education student needs 1:1 supervision all the time because he has serious seizures that could cause death. One afternoon, my class was short staffed and had no sub. I have to take my one-to-one student to the sensory room to get another student back to the classroom. My coworker who was with that student went to help another coworker in the bathroom who was alone and needed help changing the students’ disposable adult briefs. Unfortunately, the student was angry because he wanted to stay in the sensory room longer and he bit my arm and another student’s arm. My student’s arm was black with teeth marks and part of the skin was bitten off. These kinds of accidents happen a few times because we don’t have enough staff for our students. Please help us to make sure our students are safe” -Anonymous COE Paraeducator
“It started when I heard screaming. He was behind that door and he punched the bulletproof glass. There was blood everywhere. There was blood on me, there’s blood on OTs who came in to help because we were so understaffed then, eventually the police had to come and, you know, these were big guys and they didn’t know what to do….I basically ran into that classroom not expecting to know what was going to happen. And I’d seen the students basically hurt all the kids and all the staff. And, uh, he was aiming the filing cabinet to students that had brittle bone disorder where his bones would break easily. I got in between that student and the other students and, and he was angry earlier that morning. He had told his mother that if he had went to school, he was going to kill a student. So I got in between the student and he was angry that I was preventing him from hurting other students as, as the minimal staff, uh, take away the other students. So he punched me really hard. This wasn’t a, you know, a regular punch. This was a punch. A punch, like a boxer. Um, I had seen stars, I had actually blacked out for a few seconds. When I went to workman’s comp they said it was like the equivalent was like being in a car accident, the way he had punched me was like Mike Tyson or something. Um, but you know, when I, when I came back to my senses, when I stopped blacking out, I continued preventing him from hurting the other kids and staff. He was behind that door and he punched the bulletproof glass. There was blood everywhere. There was blood on me, It took some time. It took me a year before really the full swing of my symptoms started to happen…. I was having pain in my teeth. It was unbearable pain. Um, and it got to the point where I told the dentist like, Just please take out all my teeth. Give me root canals, whatever. I just can’t stand it. Every day was just hurting. I couldn’t even do anything. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t even talk, um, little by little without notice that …..[my] jaw is misaligned with the rest of [my] face. There’s nothing I can do about it. I have exercises. I can wear a tray. to kind of prevent it from progressing so rapidly, but eventually I will lose my ability to speak because I will develop arthritis in my jaw. I worked in the county for more than almost two decades and I feel like I should be supported [by COE] because I support the kids.” – SCCOE Paraeducator
