A handful of Fresno Unified paraprofessional employees who work with autistic children at Ericson Elementary School returned Wednesday evening to tell the School Board that recent job reassignments are making their classrooms less safe and cutting into education time.

It was their second trip this month to address the board at the Nutrition Center on Brawley Avenue, where trustees are meeting while their downtown headquarters is being renovated. And the paraprofessionals say they plan to keep coming until someone does something.

Until this month, four Ericson staffers were teaming up with a teacher in a classroom where children from preschool through kindergarten age with moderate to severe autism get lessons on socialization and learning their ABCs. The sooner in life that children with autism can get the kind of intensive support that the Ericson team has been providing, the likelier that someday they will have the skills to be able to join general education classes and interact — and learn from — other youngsters as they progress through school.

When they arrive at Ericson, many of the youngsters are still in diapers and require physical care as well as close supervision to keep them from physical altercations with other students or from hurting teachers and paraprofessionals.

Unlike teachers, paraprofessionals do not have a teaching credential and are classified, not certificated, employees. But they participate in educational activities, augmenting the work of the classroom teachers.

District Seeks ‘Baseline’ Staffing Levels

But starting on Nov. 7, the dynamics of their Ericson class changed when two staffers were transferred to Mayfair Elementary School, at the same time that two new students were added to the class. It’s part of the district’s move toward “baseline” numbers of staffers across the district, district human resources officials told GV Wire.

The district worked with the CSEA union this summer to conduct hiring fairs to fill 1,000 paraprofessional vacancies, some of whom were hired to work with special education students, and were able to fill about 85% of them, said Annarita Howell, assistant superintendent of labor relations.

Once the school year began, the district began to examine assignments and staffing levels, including after classes were “leveled” and new rooms were opened, she said.

When programs are moved, staff are moved with them, Howell said.

The district has already moved about 20 to 25 staffers and may move more after the winter holiday break, she said.

After the end of the COVID pandemic the district took a hard look at staffing and realized that some schools had more staffers than others, leading to the reassignments this year, Howell said.

But Fresno Unified is not blind to the fact that some students need additional support, and HR officials are meeting with district staff to match enrollment needs to staffing assignments, she said.

Student Needs, Not Staff Levels

However, baseline staffing does not take into account the needs of students, say the paraprofessionals. The Ericson class added two students while losing one of the two staffers who went to Mayfair.

“All they’re doing is looking at numbers. They’re just looking at how many staff we had compared to how many students we had,” said paraprofessional Janetta Routson. “They’re not coming into classrooms and looking at things and figuring out why we have so much staff.”

The remaining staff is strapped and unable to do little more than provide daycare, said Brooke Acosta, one of the two staffers who was transferred to Mayfair.

“It’s sad and disappointing that our room and other classrooms throughout the district are having to be run more like a daycare and not a school because we cannot run academics and keep the kids safe at the same time,” she said at Wednesday’s board meeting.

After Wednesday’s board meeting, several staffers rolled up their sleeves to show bite marks and pinch marks that their young charges have given them.

Parent Worried About Son

Mai Xiong, an Ericson parent, said she’s concerned about the safety of her son, a transitional kindergartner now in his second year at Ericson.

“Taking my son to school every day is like me putting my trust on the staff there and for them not going to have enough staff, it’s kind of, you know, it’s the unknown. You worry every day for the sake of their child,” she told the board.

Staff is stretched so thin at Ericson that they no longer have the time to work with parents such as Xiong on how they can continue lessons from the classroom when they’re home with their kids. Doing so can help accelerate learning opportunities for children with autism, Routson said.

“It helped parents to come in and see what we are doing with students and then they can take some of what we do home and use it at home as well, which I’ve seen Miss Mai do, and it’s amazing,” she said. “But now we can’t invite parents into the classroom because we don’t have the staff to hold events like that. So it’s really taking away from them as well.”