We hope everyone has had a wonderful summer and is looking forward to a fresh start with the upcoming school year.
On the heels of the Auditor General’s Special Education Report, issued in May, IAO got busy reaching out to the Minister of Education’s office to discuss the audit and crucial reform that is needed for special education in this province. You can find the letter we sent here, and our presentation to the Minister’s policy staff in July here.
Our main recommendations were:
1. Eliminate the Identification, Placement, and Review Committee Process – take those millions of dollars a year spent on staff salaries “identifying” people by their deficits and instead move those supports into the classroom. This will support the co-teaching and other supports teachers need to support their whole classroom better.
2. Implement Universal Design for Learning/Accommodations as intended – this can be accomplished by reallocated the resources away from IPRCs and to the teachers and support staff.
3. Individual Education Plan Reform – look to the fantastic work of Dr. Shelley Moore on how to do this better and more meaningfully.
4. Better Professional Training – single online courses should not be enough to “qualify” as a special educator, and all teachers need the skills to teach today’s diverse classrooms.
5. Look closely at the 26 Boards that the Auditor found aren’t spending their special education allocation funding – why aren’t these boards spending their allocated funds?
While we don’t expect any big changes to education laws any time soon, we have to start somewhere. We did feel we had a productive discussion with the Minister’s team, especially as it relates to the potential to improve the Individual Education Plan. There is no need to invent this wheel over again: the work has been done by Dr. Moore.
On funding, we emphazied that the entire school budget is intended to be used to support our students with disability related needs, and the special education allocation is an incremental add on, not the “whole budget”. Boards do not “overspend” when they use resources that are not “protected” for special education and they are required to use all those resources to meet Human Rights Codes obligations, which was settled in the Supreme Court of Canada decision of Moore v. British Columbia. They are doing what they are supposed to do.
We also urged the Ministry to look into the 26 boards the Auditor found were not spending their special education allocation – why not? What are they doing differently? How are they serving their students? Are they succeeding or failing?
In September, we will be releasing an indepth three-part blog series on the Auditor’s report. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to enjoy these last few days of summer and the upcoming Labour Day holiday weekend, before the school year begins.
