(Lévis) The Administrative Labor Court of the Chaudière-Appalaches region has concluded that an elementary school teacher suffered an industrial accident after a student brought knives into the school and told his classmates he intended to kill her.
Posted at 2:32pm, updated at 5:56pm.
Jacob Serebin The Canadian Press
That ruling overturns a May 2020 decision by the Commission on Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST) that sided with their employer, a school service center near Quebec, and denied its workers’ compensation claim. CNESST had ordered the teacher, identified in the ruling as KR, to reimburse more than $1,590 in benefits received.
“Receiving death threats, even if they are not carried out, goes beyond the normal and foreseeable scope of the work of a second-grader teacher,” wrote administrative judge Renée-Claude Bélanger in her judgment at the end of July.
The facts underlying the accident at work occurred on November 27, 2019, according to Judge Bélanger’s decision.
It says a seven-year-old student – identified as The threats were reported to a teacher at the school, who found four butter knives in the boy’s backpack and confiscated them.
KR told the court that she was never officially informed of the incident and instead learned about the incident from a fifth grader who rushed to get the information.
The teacher testified that after the child told her about the incident just before class started, she felt a sense of panic to the point that she could barely remember the rest of the morning.
“All she remembers is that X was in her class and no one came to tell her about the situation or to ask if she was okay,” Judge Bélanger summarized.
Later that day, during recess, a colleague came up to KR to ask if it was true that X had brought knives to school and threatened to kill her. The colleague told him that according to the verdict, all the children had spoken out about the incident, but KR had still not been officially informed of the incident.
She only found out months later that the student had brought nothing to school but simple butter knives while reading documents filed with the Labor Relations Board, Ms. Bélanger wrote.
“The court holds that (KR) would have preferred not to have X in his class at the start of the day, but also to have been informed of the situation by someone other than a fifth grader,” she said in a letter.
When X and her mother met with a police officer and the school administration that day, KR testified that she was not invited to the meeting, Judge Belanger noted.
disruptive student
In his statement, KR described X as a “turbulent,” “unpredictable,” “impulsive,” and “disrespectful” student who was feared by other children and frequently ran away from class. The teacher also testified that she was the target of verbal abuse from X, who “broke her equipment and disrupted the operations of the class.” The judgment also lists several incidents in which X disrupted the flow of lessons or did not follow the rules established by the school.
KR told the court that the boy’s behavior over the ensuing months increased her anxiety after the incident and that she dreaded the thought of finishing the school year with him in her class.
According to him, the school authorities rejected a request to give the student time to work with a subject teacher.
The work stops
KR stopped working in mid-January 2020 and sought medical attention because of his anxiety. His treating physician had diagnosed him with an “adjustment disorder with anxious depressive mood” caused by the event, a disorder whose symptoms worsened after his return from vacation.
The teacher’s employer, a school service center that operates the school near Quebec City where she taught, dismissed her claim for an accident at work. Neither the school nor the service center are named in the verdict.
According to the decision, the employer argued that X never posed an actual or potential danger to the teacher and that her situation did not meet the criteria for an industrial injury.
The employer informed the court that the teacher had received all necessary and available professional help and that her teaching responsibilities were the normal and expected duties of a primary school teacher.
In her decision, Judge Bélanger acknowledged that dealing with a disruptive student is part of the normal duties of an elementary school teacher, but that “the fact that a student brings knives in his school bag and that he boasts about wanting to use them to kill. “ His teacher represents a traumatic event for him. »
“Receiving death threats, even if they are not carried out, is beyond the normal and predictable scope of the work of a sophomore grade school teacher,” the judge observed.