PQ’S Rousseau calls for alternative school for children with special needs

The Parti-québécois candidate for Sherbrooke, Guillaume Rousseau, says he wants to create an alternative public school where everyone has a place, including students with disabilities or learning difficulties. In this new pilot project, students would benefit from a multitude of teaching methods creating room for approaches more adapted to students’ specific needs.

"I am committed to bringing together Sherbrooke's educational stakeholders to carry out this project to help students with handicaps, social maladjustments, or learning disabilities,” he said. “We must innovate for our students who face difficulties in order to better help them."

Speaking in front of the Montcalm school on Portland Boulevard where he went to high school, Rousseau said that he was very touched by the story of Maxim Beauregard-dionne and his daughter, who recently resigned from his position as school board member to denounce the widespread practice in Quebec of separating children on the basis of a disability without even making an individual analysis of their situation. Beauregard-dionne’s daughter was directly affected by this practice and the lack of flexibility surrounding it.

"Being a father, and having been chairman of the board of Dysphasie-estrie in recent years, I am very sensitive to the issue of children with special needs,” Rousseau said. “In fact, a good part of my mandate as Chair of this organization was devoted to overseeing the preparation of an alternative public school pilot project adapted for dysphasic children.”

The candidate explained that the pilot project proposed by Dysphasie-estrie is aimed at creating an alternative public school adapted for students from 4 to 6 years old with dysphasia, a language-related neurological disorder that produces a set of deficits in children. The planned project was to involve parents actively and to rely on innovative pedagogical practices. An entire research component on the effectiveness of these pedagogies was to accompany the project.

This project has been a subject of discussion between Dysphasie-estrie and the Sherbrooke area school board for months but has not yet been realized. In light of that lack of progress, the organization decided to open a day care service that is suitable for dysphasic children and open to others. The experience has been positive for all involved, and served as the inspiration for Rousseau’s new pilot project.

"In Dysphasie-estrie, I was made aware of the cases of parents wanting their children to have access to pedagogies adapted to their disabilities. More recently, with the case of Maxim Beauregard-dionne, but also others met in my practice as a lawyer, I was also made aware through cases of parents who want the classroom to be a welcoming environment, in the image of the society in which their children live, in order to develop better social participation. Then, I realized that the best way to meet the wishes of all these parents was to put in place a more flexible framework, combining various pedagogical approaches."

Quebec’s English school system already functions on an integration model.

GORDON LAMBIE Rev. Linda Buchanan of Lennoxville United Church (left) and Rev. Malekesa Oboo of Plymouth-trinity United Church (right) presented Clothilde Stamm of Sherbrooke's La Grande Table with a cheque for $1,200 on Sunday. The money, collected by the two congregations over the season of Lent, was given to support the work of the local organization in providing healthy, balanced meals to local families and schoolchildren.