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When her youngest child was in junior kindergarten, an Ottawa mom says scissors were banned from the classroom because teachers feared one of the students might use them as a weapon.

Her middle child’s classroom was regularly “evacuated,” with students filing out to safety in the hallway as an out-of-control student trashed the place.

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Her oldest child has two students in the class who have punched other children.

It’s an ordinary elementary school in suburban Ottawa with good teachers, says the mom, whose name is being withheld to protect the identify of the children. She is deeply concerned about the amount of violence at school.

Her concerns are backed up by statistics from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, which show that the number of “violent incidents” reported by staff has dramatically increased in the last three years.

There were 1,909 incidents reported in 2015-16, compared with 3,746 incidents in 2017-18. That’s an increase of 96 per cent.