By Keith Kalawsky
For Ruth Cooper and many other parents, the fight to keep special classes for gifted students in Ottawa is far from over.
A parent of two sons in the gifted program at McNabb Park School, Cooper will try to push the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board for more room in classes designed for gifted children.
Parents must be heard, Cooper says, before the school board approves recommendations that would see the number of spots in gifted programs fall from 600 to 400 next year.
“It would cause all sorts of problems and probably some lawsuits as well,” Cooper says. “There is a lot of unknown about this and (the school board) hasn’t really thought this through.”
Already facing the closure of their school, gifted students and their teachers at McNabb are now threatened by large budget cuts to special education, recommended in a report by school board staff.
It suggests that more than $600,000, or 9.6 per cent, be cut from the budget for gifted programs. This means more gifted students will end up in regular classes or “withdrawal” programs, where children leave regular classes for only a few hours a week for special instruction.
A “congregated” gifted program — such as the one offered by McNabb — will be set up next year in four schools. Students attend separate classes and follow personalized curriculums taught by specially-trained teachers. McNabb currently offers the only congregated program for elementary students in Ottawa. Seventy students from throughout the region are enrolled.
If trustees accept the board staff’s recommendations, nine teachers will be cut from the gifted program, leaving fewer seats in gifted classes for eligible students.
Because McNabb is one of 10 schools in Ottawa slated for closure, its gifted students will vie for spots in other schools with congregated programs.
With fewer teachers, there won’t be enough room to put all gifted kids in separate classes, says Nancy Corbett, a member of the Association for Bright Children.
Corbett says she’s happy to see programs offered in other parts of the region, but says cutting the number of seats in special gifted classes and putting more students in part-time programs isn’t the answer to school board’s budgetary woes.
“One hundred per cent of the time in one environment to half a day out to do something else? It’s just not the same,” Corbett says.
Some parents of gifted children say congregated classes are the best way to ensure kids get the kind of attention they need.
“For these kids it’s quite essential to have a school like this, because if they’re in a regular program they become quite bored and some of them are discipline problems,” says Annie Deutsch, who has a daughter in the gifted program and chairs the council.
“I know that you sit and you look at this report with a great deal of fear in what you see and probably a great deal of anger,” says Barbara Stollery, superintendent of special education for the board.
“We have had some very tough times as a result of this particular model.”
The report favours the meshing of special education classes with regular classes and meeting the needs of exceptional students in their local community schools.