By Fatima Baalbaki
Anger, impatience and frustration were in the air last week as the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board held its third consultation with parents of special education students whose programs are threatened with cancellation this fall.
More than 80 worried parents attended the meeting and many expressed their discontent with the board’s proposed city-wide closure of 21.5 special education classes. Because of a projected shortfall in its budget, the board needs to cut $27.7 million in costs.
Centretown’s Centennial public school is facing the possibility of losing one of its two physical support units – the only such class in the board – as well as its only senior kindergarten language learning disability class. The board wants to integrate most students with special needs into regular classrooms, a plan that does not please parents.
“I don’t see how diluting the issue is more efficient,” said one father angrily, pointing out that these students need extra attention and resources no matter which classroom they are put in. “The solution to pollution is dilution. You’re treating our children like garbage.”
Other parents insisted that regular classroom teachers do not have the skills or the training to deal with students with learning disabilities. Most parents said they were frustrated that the board is putting its financial troubles ahead of their children’s education.
“This is about our children’s future,” one mother said. “Go into a deficit and let the province deal with it.”
According to an October 2006 report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ottawa is one of four cities that is getting less per-student funding from the provincial government than it did a decade ago. This translates into $309 less per student every year for Ottawa.
But, the board’s superintendent of learning support services, Dawn Paxton, insisted during the consultation that the tight budget is not the main cause for these proposed cuts.
She said declining enrolment due to population changes is leaving a high number of vacancies in public education classrooms, and that is why the board has proposed to close them.
Centennial’s senior kindergarten language learning disabilities class, for example, has 16 vacancies this year, with only four students enrolled.
The school’s two physical support unit classes currently have 16 students. With four vacancies and six students expected to graduate at the end of the school year, the board wants to combine the remaining 10 students, and their wheelchairs, into one classroom. Centennial already lost one physical support unit class last year because of budget cuts, as well as a deaf and hard of hearing class.
Diane Bartlett’s 10-year-old son Justin is in one of Centennial’s physical support unit classes. Bartlett says combining two classes into one won’t work.
“There’s not enough space,” she said. “I think [the board] is dreaming in Technicolor if they think they can put 12 wheelchairs into any of Centennial’s classrooms.”
Her son has severe cerebral palsy and is quadriplegic, which means all four of his limbs are paralyzed. “My son needs personal care, he can’t hold a pen by himself,” Bartlett said, emphasizing that an overcrowded classroom may not give him this personal care.
Jennifer McKenzie, the new trustee for Somerset-Kitchissippi, says too many cuts to special education have been made in past years to enable the board to go ahead with all the proposed class closures this year.
“I don’t think we’ll come anywhere near the $27.7 million in cuts. There’s simply nothing left to cut. We cut to the bone last year, and this year we’re staring hungrily at our fingers.”
Although last week’s public consultation was supposed to be the third and last meeting with parents about this issue, the board has added two more consultations during the last week of January to get the maximum amount of input possible. The cuts are to be finalized and presented to the school board’s trustees next month.