Dear Editor:
Regarding your July 3 story, Supreme Court Will Hear NV Parent's Appeal: The Moore ruling and subsequent appeals highlight many issues with special education, learning and other disabilities that continue to be a problem in the North Vancouver school district, and no doubt in other districts across this province.
Our own experience has been that schools feel free to ignore the laws and rulings of this province, such as Hewko vs. BC (2006 BCSC 1638) which was ignored by our school when our child's educational assistant time was changed unilaterally and in response to supposed budget pressures. The Hewko ruling highlights the school's statutory duty to consult meaningfully with parents, not inform them after the fact.
Somehow budgets are always blamed, and the North Vancouver Teacher's Association has decried "millions" in budget cuts, all at a time when North Vancouver school district 2010/2011 budget figures show increases over eight per cent per full time equivalent (FTE) in benefits paid to staff, and nearly three per cent increases per FTE in funding from provincial operating grants.
The B.C. Human Rights Act seems to be ignored by schools, unless of course you back up your rights with a sternly worded letter reminding them of your child's legal rights, which thankfully are now strengthened by Canada's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - article 24 of which now outlines education rights.
The original 2005 Human Rights Tribunal ruling provides clues to what is really needed to support children with special needs in B.C. If the schools don't care to provide proper education services, then parents should have other options, and this is exactly what the Human Rights Tribunal did in ruling that the Moore family should be reimbursed for the costs of a private education for their child. With some irony, the North Vancouver school district now leases a closed school to Kenneth Gordon Maplewood, the same school that successfully accomplished what the school district could or would not do: provide a successful education to a child with special learning needs.
We can put families first by starting with the most vulnerable, ensuring that no child is left behind. If schools can't or won't help, then families need choice which, in keeping with the tribunal ruling, might best be accomplished with: a system of school choice with education vouchers; privately operated special needs schools, as is the case in Alberta; or, charter schools which have an ample record of success and bipartisan support in the United States.
John Paul Morrison North Vancouver
