By Julie Middleton
Despite December’s court victory that saw special education funding restored to Ottawa schools, some school board trustees are skeptical that services will reach all students who need them.
According to Lamar Mason, co-chairperson of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board’s special education advisory committee, no extra resources will be put back into elementary schools to make up for the cuts.
Instead, she says, services will be taken from students who receive special education but are not “formally identified” as special needs students.
Under Ontario’s Education Act, schools are required to provide extra services to students identified through the Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC) as “exceptional.” A child is assessed through observation and formalized social, psychological, language and academic tests.
For the past six years, the board has encouraged principals not to force children through the IPRC process. The process is “costly, time consuming and many parents don’t want their kids labelled,” says Mason.
The principals were told to provide extra support to children who were having trouble with reading, writing and basic arithmetic “just to get over the hump,” says Mason. “Now they’re being told, no give that to the IPRC’d kids.”
Now, according to Mason, many children who need special education will not receive it because they have not been identified through the IPRC process and therefore not legally entitled to it.
“As a member of the board I find this distinction reprehensible,” says Mason. “Parents will have to insist their kids are properly diagnosed and assessed to guarantee they get the support they need.”
Currently there are 3,600 children waiting to go through the IPRC process
Maggie Melenhorst, spokesperson for the school board, says students who have not been through the IPRC process because they require only minimal extra help or because their parents rejected it, will still continue to receive remedial help in the classrooms.
The type of help they receive will be determined by their teachers and their parents not by the board, adds Melenhorst.
“Can we provide additional classrooms and teachers for students who are not IPRC’d? No, not at this time. That doesn’t mean we can’t provide services in the classroom.”
Melenhorst also denies the board has ever instructed principals to not IPRC students.
“In order to trigger money and resources to provide these [special education] services students must be IPRC’d. It’s essential.”
Funding blows were dealt to special education programs in late August after the province appointed Merv Beckstead to reduce the board’s $23.3-million deficit.
Beckstead slashed $3.7 million from special education programs,and cut almost 24 Special Education Learning Centre teaching positions from secondary schools and 20 resource teachers from the elementary level.
Secondary school students with special needs were forced into regular classrooms with little extra support, while at the elementary level students’ services were reduced from direct assistance to “monitoring.”
Glebe Collegiate Institute, where most of Centretown’s special needs teenagers attend secondary school, saw the biggest cuts — it lost the equivalent of one full-time special education teacher and had the commitment of another reduced to one-third of the school day.
Many students previously in separate classes were forced into mainstream classes with little extra support, says principal Frank Allen.
“It was difficult for the students,” says Allen. “Special education teachers have special techniques for teaching. When special education students are in a regular class of 30 other students that’s very difficult.”
Last November, three parents of children with special needs and the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario asked the court to reverse the cuts. In December, the judge overruled the school board’s decision.
By as early as last Monday all Ottawa schools should have received directions on reinstating services to the 170 secondary students and 61 elementary students affected by the cuts. An additional 10 teaching positions were also granted to the most affected secondary schools.
Even now, everything is “more or less” back to normal, says Allen. Glebe Collegiate has recovered almost all the services it lost, and it will soon be hiring another half-time special education teacher.
Somerset-Kitchissippi trustee Joan Spice says despite the positive decision, there needs to be more commitment to special education from the board and the province. She adds the board cut 90 special education classrooms two years ago, placing students back into regular classrooms.
“The province wants to integrate them because they don’t want to pay for congregated classes, but they don’t want to fund teaching assistants in the classroom,” she says.