Parents fearful of losing funds for kids with complex needs

EDMONTON Parents of children aged three to six with complex needs are facing growing uncertainty about funding in the province’s upcoming budget for a critical early-learning program.

Program Unit Funding (PUF) provides integrated early-learning supports for children with medical needs or learning or cognitive disabilities, beginning in pre-kindergarten to prepare them to enter Grade 1 and learn alongside their peers.

Education Minister Adriana Lagrange committed again Tuesday to maintaining PUF, but parents say funding needs to grow with enrolment to meet the complex needs of the students.

“Stagnant funding is essentially a cut,” said Stacey Speta on Tuesday, who says her son made “leaps and bounds” in learning to communicate with autism and a related speech delay thanks to PUF funding.

Her son’s pre-kindergarten classroom went from four or five educational assistants to two after schools began reining in spending due to retroactive cuts in October’s provincial budget, she said.

With 15,000 new students set to join Alberta schools in September, NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman said it is vital the PUF program grows with the need in the province.

“Many of those will be kids who have a variety of needs and will need additional supports,” Hoffman said.

“Maintaining ... means that there will be less for everyone if there’s more kids coming in.”

Lagrange said Hoffman was spreading “blatant misinformation” about PUF funding.

“I want to be crystal clear: Program Unit Funding remains one of the key grants under this (new funding) model (and) students with disabilities will continue to receive the support they need,” she said, adding that funding details would be outlined in the Feb. 27 provincial budget.

“It’s time for the NDP to stop misleading Albertans.”

Although Alberta Education’s overall budget stayed at $8.223 billion for the province’s 2019-20 fiscal year, statements obtained by the Alberta Teachers’ Association show funding to the province’s 61 public, Catholic and francophone school boards dropped by nearly $136 million — about two per cent — between the last school year and this one.

During the same period, the number of students enrolled in their schools grew by 13,029, or about two per cent.

The PUF program provides up to $25,051 to schools for each eligible student.

There is no public data available on the number of students currently funded through PUF.

Shantel Sherwood, whose two sons both receive PUF funding, says supporting kids early is essential to avoiding more serious behavioural issues and setting them up for success in later grades.

Her five-year-old son, Orrin, has autism and uses an aid to communicate, but Sherwood says cuts at his school have meant he gets less individualized attention and becomes frustrated more easily.

“He has the words but he has no way to communicate them, and without that aid ... he has no way of functioning through the day.”