Liberals reword Education Reform Act to include students with special needs

Education Minister Zach Churchill says his government remains committed to providing an inclusive education for any student in the province with special learning needs.

"We are looking to enhance the supports for all the needs in our system for students," he said Monday night at Province House.

Churchill spoke following concerns from disability advocates that the Liberals' Education Reform Act, Bill 72, as it was written, left out wording in the Education Act that guaranteed an inclusive education for a student at their neighbourhood school with kids their own age.

Grits committed to inclusion

The missing text read: "a school board shall … develop and implement educational programs for students with special needs within regular instructional settings with their peers in age, in accordance with the regulations and the Minister's policies and guidelines."

Early into the legislature's law amendments committee meeting on Monday, the Liberals introduced an amendment to Bill 72 that said "objects of a regional centre are to develop and implement educational programs for students with special needs within regular instructional settings with their peers in age, in accordance with the regulations and the minister's policies and guidelines."

Regional centres are what school boards are now referred to in Bill 72.

Fears of weakened services

Churchill said his government is committed to a "successful model of inclusion," and the only reason the language was left out in the first place was because it applied to school boards. The regional centres, he noted, are answerable to the Education Department, and so the government believed the guarantee was implicit with the use of the words "all students."

But disability advocate Richard Starr said he was concerned absence of the word "shall" in the amendment leads to less directive power.

He noted the original text stems from the Charter or Rights and Freedoms and he's worried it could lead to a student with a disability not being guaranteed the rights that existed under the act Bill 72 is replacing.

"You don't throw out the human-rights baby with the bathwater of perceived failures in the implementation of inclusion."

A call for a seat at the table

Acadia University professor Cynthia Bruce, who is blind, said the amendment gave her no comfort and she worried there is a renewed push for segregation of some students.

Aside from calling for stronger language in the bill, Bruce also asked that the specific role of the special educational programs and services committee be recognized in legislation, rather than policy, and that the provincial advisory committee created in Bill 72 include first-voice representation for people with disabilities.

"I have learned this is the only way to guarantee the protection of our rights and governments must simply stop making decisions about us without us."