Parents seek to raise profile of provincial schools for deaf and blind children

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They’re the only schools of their kind in Ontario, yet some families with deaf or blind children aren’t even aware of them.

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That’s just one of the issues parents, students and teachers of provincially operated schools for deaf and blind children are raising at a series of rallies planned in Southwestern Ontario and beyond, says Stephanie Antone, whose 11-year-old low-blind daughter attends W. Ross Macdonald school for the blind in Brantford.

“There’s low enrolment and no promotion of our schools,” said Antone, an Oneida Nation of the Thames resident who chairs the provincial demonstration schools council.

“Why aren’t our schools being championed by the Ministry of Education? They’re the only schools in the country,” she said, adding other provinces don’t offer the same type of special education for children who are deaf, blind/low-vision and deaf and blind.

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Ontario operates seven so-called provincial and demonstration schools, including two in London, for students living with disabilities. The two London schools are the Robarts school for the deaf and the Amethyst school for those with severe learning disabilities. Besides the Brantford school, the others are in Milton and Belleville.

Concerned parents, their children, staff and union leaders have organized rallies at the four provincial schools, including one held in Milton last week, to shed light on numerous issues facing the school system, such as no promotion and declining enrolment.

Another rally is set for Thursday at Sir James Whitney school in Belleville at 3:30 p.m. Two more rallies will be held — at the Robarts school in London on Tuesday and W. Ross Macdonald school in Brantford on April 13.

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Among several issues to be addressed at the rallies are “outdated policies and information, lack of transparency and lack of communication, chronic underspending and understaffing,” and lack of  “specialized services” such as early intervention programs, Antone said.

A spokesperson for Ontario’s Education Minister Stephen Lecce said on Wednesday the government is committed to supporting and operating the schools because it knows “how vital they are to the health and success of vulnerable students and their families.”

“Our government is firmly committed to supporting and promoting provincial and demonstration schools in providing quality learning opportunities for these exceptional students,” spokesperson Grace Lee wrote in a statement.

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The statement said the province has “increased funding in special education to a historic level of $3.25 billion, and increased year-over-year funding for (the provincial and demonstration schools branch) since 2020 to support their operations.”

Still, many schools are dealing with infrastructure issues that have yet to be addressed or been overlooked for too long, said David Sykes, district officer of Provincial Schools Authority Teachers. The district represents about 200 teachers working in provincial schools.

“Our pools at all sites have not been working for years,” said Sykes. “We learned the Sir James Whitney pool has been out of commission for several years. It just recently got back online.”

As for financial support, Sykes said the amount of funding increased year over year “doesn’t keep up with the cost of inflation, or parts for a pool, for example.”

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Many families across Ontario rely on the provincially operated schools, with some commuting hours each week so their child can receive specialized instruction, through either the schools’ day or residential programs.

But with cuts to the schools’ resource services department in recent years, children can’t access the early intervention support they need, and often, families are left unaware they even exist, Sykes said.

“We’ve lost every teacher (34 full-time employees) in our resource department . . . and none of those teachers have been replaced,” he said. “All those vacancies have been eliminated.”

Those staff members were “critical to identifying deaf, hard-of-hearing kids in the mainstream (schools) and bringing them into our school . . . Parents don’t even know our schools exist.”

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With the 150th anniversary of W. Ross Macdonald school approaching this May, and a provincial election in June, the school’s student and parent council is inviting Brantford-Brant candidates to a debate this summer focused on education for students with disabilities.

“Every MPP, no matter what their party is, needs to be a friend and a champion of our schools,” Antone said.

For her, the conversation is part of a broader effort “to ensure the success of the school for another 150 years.”

“My daughter’s only Grade 6,” she said. “I want the school to be what it can be, what I’ve heard it can be, and what it has the potential to be.”

To learn more about the upcoming rallies, contact Tamara Witcher, president of the Provincial Schools Authority Teachers District 30, at [email protected] or see March 27 post at www.facebook.com/osstfnews/.

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