Special Needs Education? Name Your Price

There's no doubt in Dawn Steele's mind that special needs education is underfunded in British Columbia. But the parent activist says neither the BC Teachers' Federation nor the provincial government have the numbers right when it comes to how much money we need to get kids -- and classrooms -- back on track.

Steele, a member of Moms on the Move, a provincial parent advocacy group formed in response to government's 2001 education cuts, says schools need at least $110 million annually to make up for lost resources. That's how much Steele says then-education minister Christy Clark cut in grants for students with high incidence special needs.

However, taking into account the rise of teacher salaries by 27 per cent and the increase of special needs diagnoses by five per cent in the last decade, that price tag would reach about $175 million per year.

Either way, it's way less than the $336 million per year the teachers' are seeking, and more than the $165 million over three years and $75 million annually thereafter that the government is offering.

"The teachers are looking to go back to this really rigid situation that you had in 2001, where if you have a kid with special needs your class must be two kids smaller and you must have special needs teachers," says Steele.

"I'm not saying things have not gotten a lot worse since that's been eliminated, but there were reasons why people said that was too rigid an approach."

Loosen up on flexibility: Steele

Steele doesn't see the need for such strict rules on class size and composition when the definition, and requirements, for kids with special needs varies so much.

"These kids are all so different, their needs are so different, classroom situations are so different, that rigid approaches like that are enormously costly," she told The Tyee.

Take Sir Charles Tupper Secondary in Vancouver where Steele's autistic son attends. In order to accommodate for class size and composition rules, which allows for no more than three special needs children per classroom, she says the school would need at least 13 more teachers and $1 million per year to pay for their salaries.

"The teachers feel that flexibility is an 'f-word.' It has been used against them, there's no denying that, but it's throwing out the baby with the bath water to say that you need to go back to this really costly approach," she says.

"We're never going to get $300 million to go back that way. I think it's not realistic and it's not an effective way of spending resources."

Shift in training advocated

It's not just how much money is injected into the education system, says Steele, but how.

Teacher training programs at universities in this province need to include special needs training for all would-be teachers. And teachers on the job already need that training, too.

"The basic training program for teachers includes no training in special education and inclusion strategies, and fewer teachers have gone on to do the extra specialized training that qualifies them as special education teachers,'" she says.

Her answer is to put more funding -- beyond the $110-$175 million for special needs resources -- into professional development for existing teachers, and mandatory special needs training in teacher education programs.

"In many cases teachers who are really struggling, they need help, yes, but they also need to learn basic inclusion in special education strategies that could make it easy for them to manage kids with learning challenges," she says.

Individualized services, training needed: Lambert

Susan Lambert, president of the BC Teachers' Federation, stresses that if it wasn't for Steele, funding for students with special needs might never have made it to the public consciousness.

"Dawn is a terrific advocate of children with special needs and she's worked tirelessly for a lot of years trying to get more resources into a lot of schools. I think she's been very instrumental in making this a public issue," Lambert told The Tyee.

She believes Dawn has a point in her criticisms, saying that the formula for class size and composition doesn't need to match Bill 33 of the School Act, which states no more than three special needs students per class.

"But it has to be a formula that guarantees the right of every child to the individual attention that they need," says Lambert.

"I think when you have children with exceptional needs in overcrowded classrooms, and with no supports for that class, you cannot provide that level of service."

When it comes to funding, Lambert says Steele's funding wouldn't take into account the English as a second language, gifted children, and counselling services the teachers are hoping to restore with the $336 million they are asking government for.

As for teacher training, professional development just isn't enough as far as the teachers' union is concerned. Instead the ministry should be offering in-service training, specifically addressing the needs of the individual students.

"When I was a teacher, I had a child with cerebral palsy [who] had no control of her head and neck, she had no speech, and the team that was charged with trying to give this child communicative tools was trying to fit her with a laser light on her forehead so that she could trigger computer screen speech prompts," Lambert recalls.

"So it would have been very good for me to have access to in-service, a day to be taught how to use the technology for that particular child.

"It's not something that you can prescribe for all teachers; it's not useful for all teachers. There's just too broad a range of abilities and exceptionalities and disabilities that is present in the public school system. But individual in-service, for individual children, with parents, together, that would be great."

Despite their differences, both Steele and Lambert they understand where the other party is coming from, and that they both support students with special needs. And Lambert believes this disagreement won't keep them from working together in the future.

"Steele and teachers have worked together for years to highlight the absence of services for children with special needs, and I think that was a very good collaborative partnership, and it continues to be so," she says.