Parents, schools fight $1.8B special needs war
300,000 Ontario students in need Funding, spending hot-button issue
Gordon Martin is 9 years old. Over the past two years, he has arrived home from school on several occasions with feces in his lunch bag and disturbing marks on his skin. In October, he was expelled for disruptive behaviour.
His mother has been banned from all school board properties and accused of uttering profanities and making false allegations against staff and students. The Martins moved to a smaller house, cashed in their retirement savings and got help from community garage sales to pay for a specially trained support therapist to help in class with their son, who is autistic. The school asked the therapist to stay out of the classroom.
Gordon’s mother says his behaviour at school — St. Augustine Catholic School in Cambridge — was a response to how he was treated there. The school calls her complaints “ baseless.”
Welcome to the war zone that is special education in Ontario.
It’s a $ 1.8 billion- a- year battlefield, with the future of almost 300,000 children hanging in the balance. They are coping with everything from physical, developmental and learning disabilities to autism and other conditions that affect behaviour. Some, lucky enough to attend a school where the principal and teachers are willing to accommodate their needs, have a good chance to reach their full potential. Of these, many succeed beyond their families’ wildest dreams.
Others are not so fortunate.
Distraught parents complain to school boards. Angry boards fire back, saying they cannot or will not provide the extra support parents believe their children are entitled to. Tempers flare. Lines are drawn. In the process, kids fall into the chasm that yawns between the services they need and what the education system delivers. A committee studying the issue will give an interim report to Education Minister Gerard Kennedy before Christmas. Kennedy says he will issue a public status report at that time. But he also says there is much more work to be done. And a survey by the Toronto Star shows a sector in crisis. In almost 200 letters and emails, parents told of anger and frustration experienced in jumping through hoops to get an official individualized education plan for their children, only to be told by the school that it couldn’t or wouldn’t provide what was prescribed.
Janis Jaffe- White and Reva Schafer of the Toronto Family Network put it plainly in a formal statement earlier this year. “ In the past, we have seen additional money provided, additional technology and equipment provided and new facilities provided without apparent change to the system . . . These have not solved the problems because they did not address . . . flawed attitudes and processes.” Many parents, with some support from an Ontario Human Rights Commission ruling, say the province’s Safe Schools Act, introduced by the previous government, is being used unfairly to expel children with disabilities whose behaviour becomes a problem because their needs are not being met.
In a settlement announced Nov. 14, the human rights commission said the Toronto District School Board had admitted “ a widespread perception” that the act could discriminate against students with disabilities and would act to study and improve its methods. The Star reported last month that the number of suspensions and expulsions under the Safe Schools Act has increased dramatically since it was introduced in 2000, although the number of full expulsions like Gordon’s have dropped. The Martin family’s story is etched on the faces of Gordon’s parents, Janet and Gord Sr. “ We have nowhere to turn,” says Janet.
At school, she says, “ for most of the day, Gordon was isolated in a tiny room built within his classroom. Staff wore white lab coats when they dealt with him. He was confused, lonely and vulnerable. He regressed academically, socially, behaviourally and emotionally.” The coats, it was explained, were worn for protection.
For junior and senior kindergarten, Gordon attended the Montessori School of Cambridge, accompanied by fulltime personal support aide Cindy Auger, who worked one- onone offering intensive behaviour intervention therapy. Autism is a neurological condition that takes many forms. For Gordon and many others, it makes the brain highly sensitive to outside stimuli. Lights, noises and the general bustle unnoticed by other children are like an assault on the senses, leading to severe disturbances in behaviour, speech and social skills.
Doctors have described Gordon’s form of autism as severe.
“ We had no trouble; Gordon did very well with Cindy’s assistance,” Montessori principal Marilyn Herriot said in a telephone interview. So well in fact that the school has since welcomed other autistic pupils accompanied by personal assistants supplied by their families. But the province only funds such therapy up to age 6. When Gordon was no longer eligible for funding, the Martins downsized and raised money so Auger could continue to help.
However, when Gordon transferred to St. Augustine, the school asked Auger to leave the classroom and without her, Gordon’s behaviour deteriorated.
At recess, she says Gordon was isolated from other children. In addition to that, “ three times he came home with feces packed into his lunch bag,” she says. On Sept. 29, the Martins received a letter from principal Peter Gross, saying “ I am refusing to allow Gordon into my school, until further notice, because I have determined that his presence in the school would be detrimental to the safety and well- being of others in the school.” Both Gross and John Shewchuk, senior manager of public affairs for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, decline to comment on Gordon and his behaviour. But in an email to the Star Shewchuk wrote: “Mrs. Martin has been making . . . baseless claims against this school board and its staff and students for many years, becoming more and more strident over time.
“ On at least one occasion . . . her disruptive and threatening behaviour has led to her being banned from access to ALL school board properties.”
“ She has been verbally abusive and has made threats of retaliation against both staff and students at two different schools.” Gordon is currently attending a special school program at the Child and Parent Resource Institute, a provincial centre in London. His mother says he is doing well but is homesick, able to visit home only on weekends. Of her relationship with St. Augustine and the school board, she says: “ It’s easier to attack the parent than change the policy.” How did things come to this? As in many cases examined by the Star, communication between family and school board broke down completely, an issue the working committee intends to address.
“ We have to do better at communicating,” says co- chair Kathleen Wynne, parliamentary assistant to Kennedy.
“ Maybe we need a third party who knows how to get past the emotion, because common sense gets lost in emotion” — parents whose children have gone through the system or retired teachers, for example. The working committee’s initial mandate was to look at funding, which stands at $ 1.8 billion for this school year. But Wynne and co- chair Sheila Bennett, associate professor of education at Brock University, changed that to include everything from teacher training and parent satisfaction to accountability.
“ The mandate has to be broader than funding because we can’t get the funding right unless we know the outcomes we want,” says Wynne. Among major concerns:
How schools and school boards spend money earmarked for special education.
Funding based on medical diagnoses rather than educational needs. Kennedy has said he will scrap this but what will replace it remains unclear.
Inadequate training, resources and classroom support for teachers, including too few education assistants. Currently, there are fewer than 20,000 education assistants and almost 300,000 children receiving special education services.
Learning disabilities are the biggest source of special needs in schools, accounting for 43 per cent of the 187,375 students identified as “ exceptional.” But the ministry says an additional 88,191 students receive special education services often because their parents do not want them labelled as “ exceptional.”
Children coping with the wide range of disorders in the autism spectrum present some of the biggest challenges to the education system.
At a trial earlier this year, a special education teacher was found not guilty of assaulting a 7- year- old autistic boy. But during the proceedings, a disturbing picture emerged of a small, windowless isolation room, specially built to look like a castle in one corner of the special education classroom. Staff said they wore padding to protect themselves from the boy. The descriptions shock Elizabeth Starr, associate professor of education at the University of Windsor and a specialist in training teachers to teach children with autism.
“ I can’t believe anyone would do that,” Starr says.
“ We try to make teachers aware of what’s beneath the behaviour, to give them coping strategies. You have to look at the situation, the lights, the noise — what precipitated it.”
Starr says “ parents know their child best. They might come in with both guns blazing because they’ve probably had to fight for their child since he was born, but schools have to listen.” She also believes, however, that schools need more support.
“ Some teachers are overwhelmed. They may have a class of 30, including eight kids with special needs. We need smaller classes and time to meet and determine programs jointly.” Saturday in Life: How to fix the system