British ColumbiaTeachers and parents in Surrey, B.C., have launched a new tool to track how often classrooms are being cleared due to a student in crisis.Parents and teachers are hoping the data will lead to more support for students with complex needsMichelle Gomez · CBC News · Posted: Oct 31, 2025 6:54 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesTeachers and students in Surrey, B.C., have launched a tool to track how often classrooms are cleared due to students in crisis. (Ben Nelms/CBC)Teachers and parents in Surrey, B.C., have launched a new tool to track how often classrooms are being cleared due to a student in crisis.It was launched by the Surrey District Parents Advisory Council (DPAC), with the support of the Surrey Teachers’ Association and CUPE 728 unions, who hope collecting the data leads to more support for kids with complex needs and their educators.Surrey DPAC chair Anne Whitmore says there are many students who have a complex needs designation who do not have an education assistant (EA) to help them. “You probably will not have a one-to-one EA,” she said on CBC’s The Early Edition. “You might have a shared EA, but there’s a good chance you won’t have an EA at all, and that support falls on a classroom teacher.”Anne Whitmore, president of the Surrey District Parents Advisory Council, said it’s very likely that students with complex needs end up being the responsibility of classroom teachers and not education assistants. (Ben Nelms/CBC)Parents and teachers have sounded the alarm about education assistant shortages across the province, including in Vancouver and Nanaimo. Support staff have previously spoken out about issues they face such as poor working conditions and low pay. “Families across the province are having to advocate both at their school, at their district, and then to the Ministry of Education, saying that the supports are not there for their kids,” said Whitmore. The DPAC chair says a classroom being cleared of students is up to the discretion of teachers, but it usually happens for safety reasons. “Maybe a child is super loud, yelling, crying, screaming, and escalating up to physical activity … throwing an object or tossing furniture.” Classrooms can be cleared for a variety of reasons, according to Whitmore, but it’s usually done for safety reasons. (Tobias Arhelger/Shutterstock)She says the school board does not have precise information on how often incidents like these occur, and hopes collecting the data will lead to better classrooms for both students and teachers. “Our primary concern is around students with disabilities, and students with support needs, who are not receiving the support and who are not in the environment that they need,” she said. “The kids around them also need to feel safe and need to feel secure in their learning environment as well.”Surrey School District Superintendent Mark Pearmain said that, while Surrey schools don’t collect data on classrooms being cleared due to crises, such incidents are “rare.” “It’s not happening every day at every school across the province,” he said on CBC’s On The Coast. He said the reason the district does not currently report these incidents is out of concern for individual students’ privacy. “Really, this is about privacy for our kids. We want to make sure our schools are safe spaces for them and places where they can learn,” Pearmain said. ABOUT THE AUTHORMichelle Gomez is a writer and reporter at CBC Vancouver. You can contact her at michelle.gomez@cbc.ca. With files from The Early Edition and On The Coast
Surrey parents launch tool to track classroom disruptions when students have crises
