The leading supporter for gifted classes in local schools is stoking interest in the program with an upcoming information session in Centretown, a step applauded by the area’s new trustee at a time when big cuts are coming to the provincial education budget.
Parents Helping Parents, a group that advocates for gifted programs in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, will be holding an information session on Jan. 27 at the McNabb Recreation Centre.
Parents will find out about gifted identification, placement options for children, the application process and advantages and disadvantages of enrolment. There will opportunities, too, to question the guest speakers.
According to the school board’s website, up to 20 students are in the Grade 1-3 primary level gifted program class and 25 are in each of the Grades 4-8 junior and intermediate gifted program classes.
Gifted programs are offered Lisgar Collegiate and Glashan Public School in Centretown.
Heidi Petersen, the initiator of Parents Helping Parents and one of the two guest speakers, says she and other members of the Association for Bright Children of Ontario launched these sessions after sensing a growing curiosity about gifted programs among local parents.
In November, Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals made public statements warning school boards across the province of impending cuts to education funding, including probable school closures and programming impacts.
Sandals announced some Ontario schools will face a shut down to help eliminate a $12.5-billion deficit and told reporters over 600 schools in the province are more than half empty.
Erica Braunovan, trustee for Somerset/Kitchissippi, says it’s still too early in the game to get a full picture of potential impacts for specialized education programs such as gifted classes.
“It’s difficult to know what the exact role of these funding cuts (is) going to be at the provincial level,” she says. “The government is at a bargaining level with the teachers’ unions (and) …not only will there be less money towards education next year, but I’m sure it’s putting a bit of a strain on bargaining.”
But Olga Grigoriev, superintendent of Learning Support Services for the school board, says she disagrees. “In our school board we are not cutting any of the special needs programs.”
Petersen says past information sessions had successful turnouts of 50 to 75 people and these sessions help de-escalate parents’ concerns about gifted programs.
“A lot of people come just to find out what it is,” she says. “The gifted program is actually not an expensive program, it doesn’t cost the government any more money.”
She says the only difference is that the board provides funding to bus children to specialized classes, but otherwise the cost to facilitate them isn’t high.
“All those children would have to be sitting in a classroom,” she says. “They don’t have special access to resources or get tons of funding for anything – they are funded just like any other classroom in the board.”