A North Vancouver father is elated that his legal case charging that the North Vancouver school district didn't do enough to help his dyslexic son to learn will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.
On Thursday, Canada's highest court agreed to hear the case, which marks the culmination of a 15-year legal battle between Rick Moore, the local school board and the province.
Moore said having the Supreme Court agree to hear the case is tremendously important, because it will set a precedent about the way education for kids with special needs is handled across the country.
"I'm feeling very optimistic," he said. "These are the smartest judges in the land. I have a lot of faith in their ability to see right from wrong."
Moore said it's important for him to pursue the case, even though his son Jeff -- now 24 -- has long since graduated from high school. Moore said Jeff only succeeded in school after Moore and his wife enrolled him in an expensive private school that specializes in helping kids with learning disabilities.
That cost $100,000 and is well out of reach for most families, he said. "How can the average working person afford that?" he said. "They can't."
At the heart of the case is what responsibility the school system bears to help special needs children succeed. "It's not enough to say all children are entitled to a free public education if 20 to 25 per cent of those children are just taking up space in the classroom," said Moore.
As a child, Jeff Moore struggled for several years while attending North Vancouver's Braemar elementary. At the time, the North Vancouver school district had recently closed a special program that offered intensive remediation to students with learning disabilities. Moore said the public school system didn't do enough to help Jeff succeed.
The family eventually took their case to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal and won a victory there in 2005, when the tribunal concluded both the school district and the province were guilty of discrimination.
But the province appealed, and a later B.C. Supreme Court ruling reversed the decision.
In a split decision last October, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld that, with two out of three judges concluding the school district had taken reasonable steps to identify Jeff Moore's learning disability and address his needs.
The dissenting justice didn't agree, writing that the school district should have done more.
Moore said too often, children with hidden disabilities like his son's are ignored by the school system -- although a recent move towards early screening is a positive sign. The whole family plans to go to Ottawa for the court hearing when it happens, likely not until sometime next year.
