‘Infuriating’: Saskatoon parents say complex needs daughter regularly sent home early from school

A Saskatoon family is frustrated that calls to pick up their daughter early from school have become normal, due to what they understand is a lack of resources for complex needs students.

Speaking at a Saskatchewan NDP news conference on Wednesday, Celine Carlson and Tanner Henry said their family has been struggling to navigate the education system with their nine-year-old daughter.

Read more:

• More than 1,200 disabled students excluded from full-time school 2024-25 year: Report
• More funding, smaller classes needed to tackle classroom complexity: STF
• Family with complex needs asking school divisions to accommodate daughter’s learning

Carlson and Henry’s child is non-verbal, autistic and diagnosed with an intellectual disability. She also loves to swim. She attends a school in Saskatoon, but with her complex needs, there are often not enough resources to meet her learning needs, her parents said.

“Every day, we are on edge waiting for the school to call us,” Carlson told reporters on Wednesday. “Whether it’s lack of support staff or change in routine, it is uncommon for our daughter to attend a full week of school.”

Carlson and Henry are clear about what their daughter needs: one-on-one support. However, her school is reportedly unable to accommodate this request.

Part of the difficulty is that most of the students in their daughter’s class require the same — or more — learning assistance. Carlson said some students have more significant needs than their daughter, which can result in their daughter being on her own or sent home early for the day when education assistants are needed elsewhere.

“It really affects her day, and usually she is just sent to an OT room to spend the rest of her day,” Henry explained. “If not, they call us to come and pick her up.”

Henry said he is grateful for the latitude his employer provides, for him to be able to leave work so often for his daughter.

“It’s just mind-blowing to me … I know there are other parents like us that struggle as well, I just don’t know how they are able to get by,” Henry shared.

At the start of the school year, Henry said they were being called to pick up their daughter up to three times a week. He said the calls have lessened a bit, but they’re still having to collect their daughter early from school about once or twice every two weeks.

The impact affects their family’s time at home, too. Henry said they will often reach out to teachers to make sure their daughter hasn’t fallen too far behind.

“It’s not fair to her to miss out on the education that she was supposed to have at school,” Carlson added. “We do bring that home as much as we can.”

Tanner Henry (middle) and Celine Carlson (left) share their concerns about their daughter with complex needs regularly being sent home early from school due to a lack of school resources at a Saskatchewan NDP news event on Wed., Jan. 21. (Libby Gray/650 CKOM)

Official Opposition education critic, Matt Love, noted the number of classroom teachers in the province has decreased by 26 this year, according to provincial staffing data, though student enrollment has increased again.

Love said families in the province are paying because of a lack of education funding in Saskatchewan.

“Our children only get one shot at a good childhood,” Love said. “We have to ensure that we get this right.”

Carlson said she will often get notes back from the school, reporting that her daughter had a positive day.

“A lot of times, she didn’t have a great day and we think that is because they can’t give her the time that she needs,” she said. “We just want her to be happy at school.”

“We know our (school) systems are maxed out,” Carlson said, noting that they have often been called to collect their daughter after only an hour or so at school for the day because there is not the appropriate number of staff to accommodate her needs.

“Our daughter deserves the same access as every other student and yet she is met with roadblocks, barriers and a system that cannot meet her needs.”

Carlson said it breaks their hearts as parents and makes them angry to see the province report record investments in education while there seem to be fewer staff available to students like her daughter.

“Our family is suffering,” Carlson said. “The teachers are suffering and most importantly, our daughter is suffering.”

Classroom sizes stabilizing, complexity teachers offering support

Saskatchewan Teachers Federation president Samantha Becotte said there’s an increased trend happening across the province with sending students home from school early that ultimately comes down to a shortage of resources for schools.

“Not only do we have a shortfall in the support that we need in schools on a day-to-day basis, but we also don’t have a large number of substitutes available for those positions, either,” Becotte explained.

She said this has historically been a problem facing rural schools, but schools in urban settings are now also seeing more vacancies.

“A position may not be able to be filled because there isn’t a qualified teacher available,” Becotte said.

Typically, Becotte said students could be sent home if there aren’t supports available and it puts the student or others at risk of harm. That could be a student who will leave the classroom unattended without a one-on-one educational assistant, for example.

Situations like these are potentially one of many that recently hired classroom complexity teachers might be assigned to address.

Up to 515 of these teachers will be hired — 494 already have been, according to the province’s staffing data — as a result of the new collective agreement reached between Saskatchewan teachers and the province in April 2025.

“Part of it might be supporting behavioural needs with students in the school, some of them may be assigned to support more of the academic needs of students within the school,” Becotte said. “It really does depend on what that unique assignment is for the classroom complexity teacher, as there was flexibility within the agreement.”

School principals and staff are able to determine those assignments depending on the needs of their school and the student population. The new classroom complexity teachers are flexible in that they are not designated to any specific classroom or group of students, but are assigned to schools on a population basis.

Like any new position, Becotte said it will take some time for the roles of these teachers to become well established, but she said teachers are already reporting the benefits of having these added positions offer support in the classroom.

Becotte noted, however, that classroom complexity teachers are not the solution to all of the challenges being experienced in education right now.

She said regular conversations are happening with the province’s Ministry of Education to communicate those ongoing challenges and the need for continued investment. The solution, Becotte said, won’t come in any single form, with the varied needs across the province at different schools in different parts of Saskatchewan.

Up until 2024, Becotte said there had been a decline in per-student funding, leading to difficulties for schools allocating resources without reducing the support already in place. Becotte said that even increasing funding was not keeping pace with the increase in the number of students in Saskatchewan.

“We have started to see a little bit of that gap being filled, but we definitely have a long way to go,” Becotte said, noting that the number of students has levelled off to about a one per cent increase, rather than the influxes of 6,000-7,000 students previously seen.

“We do recognize that we don’t expect it to be completed within one year, but the change of course that we’ve seen from the government has been positive. We’ve heard them say good things about or recognize that public education is a priority within this province.”

Becotte said continued action is required from the provincial government to see the best for students in Saskatchewan.

Ministry of Education response

The Ministry of Education released a statement saying that “ensuring that every student has access to education is a priority for our government.”

According to the government, school divisions are responsible to manage day-to-day operations and are “best positioned to respond promptly and appropriately to student needs.”

“Their decisions are guided by a commitment to student and staff well-being and safety.”

The ministry also pointed to its Specialized Support Classroom Model expansion, which added 50 classrooms and more than 600 teachers in its 27 school divisions.

“For the 2025-26 school year, Saskatchewan’s 27 school divisions will receive a record $2.4 billion in operating funding — an increase of $186.4 million or 8.4 per cent,” noted the ministry in the statement.

The ministry also said it’s the boards of education in the province who are responsible for hiring staff based on the needs of their students, including “teachers, counsellors, psychologists and speech-language pathologists who work with students to engage them in learning and facilitate their success.”

“The Government of Saskatchewan will continue working with families and school divisions to create safe, inclusive learning environments for all students.”