This single mom says her son's education comes first. That's why she does sex work

When Piper sends her son to school every morning, she calls out a similar refrain: "I love you, try your best, I'll be here to pick you up when school is done," hoping he will be safe and supported. 

As he disappears into the school building, she disappears too, into the pseudonym Piper, as a sex worker. 

It's a job the single mother took on in the face of uncertainty and the need for being flexible for her son, who has high needs and isn't always able to attend school unless an educational assistant is there to support him. It's a decision driven by love.

"My son's education comes first and I can prioritize keeping him stable in his education and the progress that we've seen so far," she said in the latest This is Saskatchewan podcast episode.

Piper is among those concerned about Saskatoon Public School's announcement earlier this month that it will have to cut 80 educational assistants (Piper is not her real name; CBC is using her pseudonym to protect the identity of her son).

When her son doesn't have regular access to an EA, the school will call her to pick him up in the middle of the day.

It becomes hard to hold down a regular position with those kinds of unpredictable shifts, she said. 

She started sex work in 2022, when her son was in Grade 1.

"I began by working at a brothel. I saw an ad posting online and I could make it work with my hours. There was a shift that I could take and I could make it work," she said, explaining that she can work 20 hours in a week and make as much as she could in a full-time job.

In the fall, she had hopes that she would be able to restart her schooling and find more stable, less risky work, but she's had to put that dream on hold, with the latest announcement about cuts to EAs within Saskatoon. 

"I have a feeling for a lot of people and for us, this is just a really big surprise. And for the kids, I mean, it's devastating," she said. 

The school division, province and federal government have been at odds on where the responsibility lies, as the division said the cuts were a necessity, due to it not receiving expected federal funding as part of the Jordan's Principle initiative, which is meant to ensure Indigenous children receive the health, social and education services they need.

For now, affected parents are waiting to see how this might impact them, a tense situation Katherine Stevenson is also in. 

Her son Hugo Romanski has Down syndrome and autism, and he requires one-on-one support all day. While she doesn't know if the cuts will impact her family, even as a two-person household, she could foresee it forcing upheaval in their lives.