News
Nanaimo Daily News: Cutting educational assistants will hurt
June 24, 2011
Nanaimo-Ladysmith school trustees may cut approximately $600,000 next year for educational assistants throughout the district.
Cutting these EAs can only harm hundreds of students. The cuts arise after the province altered the criteria for what constitutes a special-needs student.
Counsellors and teachers within the school district had determined which students needed EAs and the province is now disregarding the opinion of those who deal most closely with the children.
Without their involvement, the only option for the school district is to keep these kids in regular classrooms, which could hinder the education of other students, or return to the segregated “special class” stigmatization previous students had to deal with.
This was considered unacceptable just a few years ago.
Seaview Elementary School in Lantzville faces the loss of five of six EAs next year and the numbers are similar at Rock City Elementary.
Those children who will no longer have access to educational assistance still require special attention in order to progress properly throughout the school system.
The alternatives are parents paying for extra help outside of school hours or letting these kids become the casualties of this government’s mania for hacking budgets. Read more
CUPE News: Parents and staff say no to cuts for the most vulnerable
June 22, 2011
TERRACE—CUPE 2052 joined parents, teachers and other concerned citizens to call on the Board of Education to rethink unfair budget cuts that hit classrooms and students.
Wilma Maier, president of CUPE 2052 representing support staff in the Coast Mountain School District, was at the meeting to send a strong message.
“We know that the provincial government is underfunding education. But the trustees will make a bad situation worse with their proposal to cut classroom services for the neediest children in the district, while at the same time putting money into higher management salaries and more management staff at the board office,” said Maier.
The June 22 meeting is the third and final meeting at which trustees have heard many concerns from staff and the community.
The district’s provincial revenue for 2011/12 has flat lined. The overall district budget is $51.4 million, about $17,000 or .03 per cent less than the previous year. Student numbers are set to decline by less than one per cent in 2011/12 – at a much slower rate than in past years.
On the expense side, the proposed board budget will would increase funding for principals, vice-principals and other professionals, while all other staff areas, especially Education Assistants who work with special needs students, will see deep cuts. The budget proposes cuts of more than 18 per cent of Education Assistants. Read more
The Tyee: Special needs students shortchanged, say parents, union
Katie Hyslop, The Tyee
March 28, 2011
There aren’t enough qualified teachers to handle rising challenge, according to special ed advocates and BCTF. Read more
- New stats on special education enrolment, staffing from Vancouver Parents for Successful Inclusion. Read more
Castlegar News: Guardian worried about special needs support
September 22, 2010
Kim Magi, Castlegar News
A Castlegar parent is becoming increasingly frustrated after he was told his great nephew with special needs wouldn’t receive more one-on-one assistance at school this year.
“[The school district] told me my expectations were too high,” said Ken Hillstead, who is the guardian for his great nephew, a Grade 9 student at Stanley Humphries Secondary School (SHSS).
He said the young man suffers from attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and can become over-stimulated in school, causing him to act out, and often needs to be accompanied to his next class or during breaks.
But because the educational assistants are stretched so thin at the school, Hillstead was told that each child with special needs would only receive 15 minutes of one-on-one time. Read more
The Province: Boy loses bid to go mainstream
By Lena Sin, The Province
September 13, 2010
A Vancouver mother is furious that her son, a special-needs student at Eric Hamber Secondary, has been shut out of integrated classes this year, effectively isolating him from mainstream students.
Cecilia Araya Diaz said her 14-year-old son, Christopher Diaz, was looking forward to taking classes in Spanish and physical education in the regular curriculum, but came home disappointed last week when he was not allowed to participate because the classes were full and priority was given to mainstream students.
“They’re putting him aside in the basement, he’s being isolated from other kids,” said Diaz. “He’s not interacting with the other mainstream students, which I think is very important for the development of my child.” Read more
Vancouver Sun: Inclusion at school: the ideal and the reality
Susan Lambert, BC Teachers Federation
July 24, 2010
Michael Zwaagstra, of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, doesn’t speak for the public school teachers of B.C. Teachers in B.C. support the inclusion of students with special needs.
We understand that diverse classrooms realistically reflect our diverse society. We know that children in such classrooms have a richer experience as they learn about and from one another. They grow in skills vital to developing successful social, familial and working relationships when they leave school. The B.C. Teachers’ Federation has adopted a number of policies asserting that every student is entitled to an appropriate education within his/ her own community. Ministry of Education policies appear to do so also, yet the provincial government is forcing school boards to cut the services that support successful inclusion. Read more
Vancouver Sun: Program worked for our son
Oliver Hofer, Letter to the Editor
July 3, 2010
Back in 2008, our nine-year-old son was diagnosed with a learning disability. Going into Grade 4, he began to lash out because he didn’t understand as his peers did, and felt very alone. We had to visit the hospital to get control of the situation. Many visits to a psychologist, along with some medication, toned the problem down but didn’t solve it.
He backed away from many activities during this rebellion. We felt helpless, but he made it through Grade 4.
Grade 5 was ahead, and we knew we had to go in a different direction. We heard about the Intensive Literacy Program. Each of its classes accepts between 10 and 20 students per year. We had to fight hard to get our son in.
I am writing today to say thank you for saving my son. It’s a tremendous program. He grew so much in it. He has improved academically, and his confidence in school as a whole has grown.
I plead with our government to expand this program and not let it become an easy target for school cuts. Read more
July 21: Vancouver Sun: Don’t blame inclusion for failure of educational planning
Op Ed by Dawn Steele & Matthew Quetton, Vancouver Parents for Successful Inclusion
Winnipeg teacher Michael Zwaagstra ( Students should be grouped by their ability, July 14) argues against inclusion, which, he says, holds back bright students and disabled students who are placed in classes where they can’t participate in “normal” activities.
Zwaagstra may not realize that British Columbia’s inclusion policy is not synonymous with full integration. It calls for placement of students with special needs based on their unique individual abilities, though sound educational reasons are needed to justify segregation. This two-decade old policy reflects the modern meaning of “inclusion,” though many still confuse it with full integration.
If students are placed inappropriately and denied appropriate supports or individualized education planning, this is not a failure of “inclusion,” but of sound educational practice. Since the days of the one-room schoolhouse, good teachers have known how to group diverse students appropriately for specific tasks to facilitate learning while still fully respecting a philosophy of inclusion. Read more
July 20: Vancouver Sun: It’s wrong to group students based on ability
Op Ed by Faith Bodnar, BC Association for Community Living
Michael Zwaagstra’s article in the July 14 Vancouver Sun (Students should be grouped based on their ability) provides a disturbing and at times seriously uninformed view as to the value of inclusive education.
He glosses over and dismisses more than 40 years of experience and best practice, attempting eventually and rather badly, to argue that inclusive education does a disservice to students with disabilities and in particular those with “severe disabilities” by not grouping them with peers of comparable “ability” — ability, as we know, being a subjective judgment.
Additionally he demonstrates a profound lack of awareness or appreciation regarding the history of education for students with special needs; that being a history of denial of access to the public education system, similar to the experiences of African Americans and aboriginal students. Read more
July 14: Vancouver Sun: Students should be grouped based on their ability
Op Ed by Michael Zwaagstra
Walk into almost any public school in North America, and you will find classrooms where some students work well above their grade level while others, who have learning disabilities or social and behavioural disorders that affect their school progress, work below their grade level. In addition, you will see students with such severe physical, sensory or behavioural disabilities that they require full-time teacher assistants even when they are not participating in any of the classroom activities. Somehow, teachers are supposed to design and implement programs that meet the needs of all these students.
This is the world of “mainstreaming” or “inclusion,” a policy of student placement where virtually all students are assigned to regular classrooms even when some of them have disabilities so severe that they cannot participate in what is considered routine or normal activities. Read more
June 29: Terrace Standard: Schools face budget dilemma
Elimination of provincial funding for “high incidence” special needs students in 2002 has created severe hardship for districts like Coast Mountains (Terrace, Pr. Rupert, Kitimat) which are expected to serve large proportions of high-needs students with no extra dollars, says this struggling northern BC board
THE SCHOOL district has to put a huge chunk of money into services for its high population of students with special educational needs because the province isn’t shelling out enough, says senior district officials.
The government provides approximately $4 million for special education but the district then doubles that amount, taking money that could be used elsewhere. Read more
June 25: CBC News: School cuts target special needs, says parent
Parents threaten legal action after special education targeted for almost half the teaching staff cut to offset Vancouver’s $17 million funding shortfall
A Vancouver parent says the recent school budget cuts are targeting special needs students in a discriminatory way, and she is joining others to take their fight to court.
Last week the board cut an estimated $18 million from its budget to make up for a funding shortfall for next year.
But Dawn Steele says those cuts will hit students like her son Sean, 17, harder than most.
Steele says the school board is disproportionately cutting services for special needs children and that amounts to discrimination.
“The only option that is left is for families to go to court,” she told CBC News. Read more
June 14: VPSI press release: VSB’s proposed cuts to Special Education unacceptable!
Province urged to honour commitments to students with special needs, review funding formula
The VSB has now posted its revised budget proposals on the District Website. These plans include cutting up to 34.6% of remaining staffing for critical learning support services for students with learning challenges, despite revisions that will save one psychologist, one Speech Language Therapist and one district consultant.
The planned cuts that directly affect students with special needs are outlined in detail below. Read more
May 4: Moms on the Move: Special Education and the Private/Public debate
To answer the original question about public funding of private/independent education (the distinction being really just branding because independent schools are becoming less so as they accept more govt funding and consider unionization, etc), I think we need to consider what is the whole point of having public schools in the first place.
If our forefathers thought the most important features of education were choice, flexibility and competition, they’d have chosen the competitive, elitist British model, as the US did. They didn’t. They very consciously chose a different way – one that was intended to give each Canadian child an equal opportunity to achieve their unique individual potential, regardless of the circumstances of birth. Read more
May 3: Vancouver Sun: Parents can’t rest until children with special needs get help they deserve
Re: Special needs neglected in public school shortfall, April 26
My advice to Jennifer Goodman would be to run, not walk, to Kenneth Gordon school in Burnaby and enrol her son immediately. My son William’s Grade 1 teacher identified him for testing, which he finally received at the end of Grade 4. Read more
May 2: North Shore News: Schools in dire need of assistants
Dear Editor:
I would like to offer this quiz to parents of school-aged children.
1. Are children with learning disabilities provided with support in the classroom (other than from the classroom teacher)?
The answer to both questions is “No.” Read more
Apr 30: Richmond News: Mom fears for her son’s future, safety
Alan Campbell, Richmond News
Like many kids his age, seven-year-old Ryan Yamada loves dancing, soccer and gadgets.
But the Grade 1 boy requires constant attention at school and drifts off into another world within seconds of his classroom educational assistant’s (EA) attention being diverted to another special needs student.
If he’s not supervised during playtime, there’s every chance he’ll run off if he sees a dog in the distance or… Read more
Apr 26: Vancouver Sun: Special needs neglected in public school shortfall
Report by Vancouver Sun’s Education reporter Janet Steffenhagen highlights the plight of families forced to pay privately for special education services that are being cut in public scchools as local Boards are forced to balance budgets in the face of provincial underfunding. Read more
Apr 21: Vancouver’s Special Education Advisory Committee brief
Committee highlights past erosion, unprecedented caseloads and warns of serious risks associated with proposed budget cuts to special education in Vancouver totalling over $3 million. Read the brief and district stats showing that the number of students with special needs in Vancouver has risen by 35% since 2001, during a period when the number of special education teachers has declined by 25%.
Apr 11: Inclusion key to Finland’s world-leading education system
Findland has the world’s best schools and the most successful student outcomes. The keys to their success, argues this report from Britain’s BBC News, are 1) inclusive classrooms that leave no student out and no one behind and 2) strong respect for the teaching profession. So why is BC seemingly determined to go in the exact opposite direction?
Apr 10: Is inclusion on the way to exclusion?
Vancouver Sun columnist Pete McMartin shares his thoughts on what we stand to lose if chidren with special needs are “disappeared” again: Read the column
Apr 8: Vancouver to cut 50 special ed staff to offset $18 million funding shortfall
The Vancouver budget proposals are out and they are grim news for special ed. As we’ve been warning, the cuts are focussed on the very limited areas of service where the local board has disrectionary spending once again – i.e. special education, libraries, ESL services, etc. The cuts are part of a broader package that leaves no program, office or department untouched. Vancouver DPAC is urging all parents to lobby MLAs for more funding, as there is clearly no way to cut $18 million on top of a decade of belt-tightening without severely hurting students.
Many students are already being left behind in districts across the Province. Cuts that focus on supports for vulnerable students, as we’re seeing in North Van, Vancouver, Victoria, Richmond and many other BC districts, will result in many more students failing in school.
- VSB budget info: http://www.vsb.bc.ca/
- CTV News: Drastic cuts in schools
Apr 3: Richmond warns of special ed cuts
According to an April 3 report in the Vancouver Sun, Richmond warns of drastic measures to cope with a $6 million provincial funding shortfall.
“…School trustees and staff are warning drastic measures may be in store: Sargent believes the school district can no longer afford to keep directing funding from other areas to its inclusiveness programs. That means there may be changes in the way the district deals with special needs students.
“In Richmond it’s the inclusive model, I believe, that is very costly for us,” Sargent said. “We really have come to the watershed moment where we have to do things differently. We can’t keep giving money that we don’t have. We’ve been overfunding inclusion for at least 15 years…” Read article
Studies have consistently shown that special education programs of equivalent quality cost about the same to deliver in inclusive vs. segregated models. References to inclusion being more costly, therefore, actually reflect the cost differential between fully-supported educational services for students with special needs vs. warehousing programs that provide little more than babysitting.
But since provincial special education grants cover less than half the cost of actually providing special education services, such programs become an obvious target for Richmond and other districts around the province facing budget crises.
Feb 2010: School Boards warn of unprecedented Special Ed cuts for 2010/11
Local BC school boards are warning parents that “discretionary” programs like special education could bear the brunt of unprecedented budget cuts projected for 2010-11, unless the province agrees to cover an unprecedented $300 million in extra costs downloaded by the province.
Richmond: A few weeks ago, a Richmond district report warned that special education supports could be cut and inclusion policies sacrificed to respond to the looming crisis (see attached budget backgrounder).
Surrey: Last week, Surrey DPAC warned that some $18-20 million in downloaded/unfunded provincial costs will result in program cuts that directly harm students.
Victoria: Victoria trustees told the Times Colonist newspaper they would have to consider cutting the district’s Special Education program to balance their budget.
Vancouver: Vancouver has served notice that up to 800 teachers could be laid off to address a provincial funding shortfall ranging from $17 to $35 million. At a meeting for parents of students with special needs, the Board Chair acknowledged that special education was particularly vulnerable to cuts. With staff costs fixed via provincial contracts and class size now protected by legislation, unprotected services like special education are among the few areas that Boards can cut.
Cowichan: One trustee is warning that the disproportionate risks facing vulnerable students are heightened by a serious gap in the class size legislation (Bill 33). Under the new regulations, alternate programs are excluded from the size and composition limits and reporting requirements, so cash-strapped districts can place as many IEP students in these classrooms as they wish, with no minimal support requirements. Given the extreme budgetary pressures facing local boards this year, the concern is that Boards will be forced to exploit this gap as a “spillway” to hide students with extra needs who cannot be accommodated in regular classes.
Limited options
Virtually every school board in the province is facing similar choices, given the limited areas that they’re allowed to cut to make up for unfunded provincial costs. All boards are required by law to balance their budgets regardless of provincial funding shortfalls. Accentuating the threat to special education is that the province only funds half or less of what districts actually spend to support students with special needs. This hefty subsidy becomes politically impossible for trustees to defend when schools are being closed and core programs slashed.
At the core of this unprecedented crisis is the growing structural deficit created by new or downloaded costs that the province refuses to cover in provincial education funding grants. These include increases for teacher salaries and benefits under provincially-negotiated contracts, new provincial carbon tax and carbon offset charges, increases to provincial MSP and WCB premiums, costs of new provincial requirements like Bill 33 and full-day kindergarten, and general inflation, which the provincial funding formula also does not cover.
The provincial government will present its budget for 2010-11 in early March and has to date refused to consider new funding to cover these new costs, leaving districts projecting the largest deficits seen in a decade, and cuts that will seriously impact students.
The most vulnerable pay
Provincial officials continue to insist that districts must tighten their belts like anyone else, ignoring that most local costs are fixed by provincial contracts and requirements. Staff won’t sacrifice pay or benefits and boards must also also find some way to cover contractural increases. Provincial requirements also govern most activities, from class size to reporting and administrative requirements. And unlike the province, local boards cannot run deficits and most have very few options for raising extra revenues locally.
In effect, school board “belt tightening” amounts to downloading a provincial budgetary crisis onto the most vulnerable students in our public schools – students with special needs, ESL and Aboriginal students and those who need “discretionary” programs and supports to succeed.
The province has created an uneven playing field by failing to protect these vital programs while covering everything from teacher pensions to teacher-student ratios, forcing boards to unfairly penalize their most vulnerable students whenever cuts must be made.
Disproportionate cuts documented
In Vancouver, an analysis of district data by VPSI found that the district had already cut the number of special education teachers by 26% since 2001, despite a 29% increase in the number of students with special needs. The district still spends almost twice as much on special education as it receives in provincial special ed funding grants, so this whopping $28 million shortfall will be tough to defend when the alternatives include reduced a reduced school calendar or school closures.
What you can do:
Parents and advocacy groups representing students with special needs and other vulnerable groups need to act immediately, by telling their MLAs, the Education Minister, Finance Minister and the Premier that it is not acceptable to target BC’s most vulnerable students to solve a problem they had no hand in creating.
1. Write provincial officials today urging them to cover all education costs in the 2010-11 provincial budget to be tabled on March 2. Sample letter and contact info.
2. Political representatives pay attention to numbers. Join with broader groups of parents, PACs and advocacy groups to urge the province to fully fund all provincially-mandated costs, including special education, instead of fighting over an inadequate budget. Connect with others in your district.
3. Urge your PAC and DPAC to write the Premier, Finance Minister, Education Minister and your local MLAs.
4. Join our growing Facebook group
5. Find out more about special education funding, useful links and advocacy resources at VPSI, a Vancouver-based parent group with strong provincial links.
Advocacy links:
Vancouver Parents for Successful Inclusion: Letter to Education Minister
BC FamilyNet: Letter to Education Minister
“Education is the best economic development and health promotion program ever invented. In tight economic times, it is only smart to maintain and expand educational investments.” from the 2009 Throne Speech.
I APPLUAD! I SAY YES! Our leaders are really standing high and seeing wide. The necessity and direct influence of education to our society doesn’t need a fortune teller to give us hint….
Receiving education fairly is every child’s right, every parent’s wish, and every hope of the future. It is a must-see, must-do responsibility to every leader who concerns in every one of the societies, cities, provinces, countries and nations in the world. The consequence of blind folding ourselves now to down size the resources of education is curial and shall I say, vital to the tomorrow’s world. We could not just cut for any reason but must review frequently of any additional needs and adjust the budget accordingly. We don’t have to travel to the countries less fortunate to experience the truth behind it, do we?