How useful are alternative schools?

When Miles White began going to mainstream school in Ottawa, first and second grade "didn't feel amazing." 

"The teachers were just kind of drilling and drilling that stuff into your head — to just focus, work, and be normal," said White, now in Grade 7.

Halfway through second grade, he switched to Lady Evelyn, one of five alternative schools hosting around 700 students in Ottawa.

Since then, he's loved going to school — a change that's nothing short of a miracle, said his mother, Jenn Wallner.

That kind of care and attention is why families enrolled in Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) alternative schools are fighting to save them. 

Cutting the entire alternative school program is part of a proposed elementary school restructuring the OCDSB announced in January.

The board has since scaled back parts of the plan, but alternative schools are still set to go.

Parents like Wallner have protested, but the OCDSB says the schools don't improve academic outcomes for their students and they can't justify their cost.

"I'm quite upset about it," said Wallner, who's also an associate professor at the University of Ottawa and a specialist in comparative education policy and curriculum.

"I think that it is going to compromise the achievement of meaningful inclusion." 

'More humane, more child-centred'

Alternative schools first popped up in the 1960s, according to Sachin Maharaj, an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa.

"It was considered much more humane, much more child-centred [and] focused on children's interests and development, as opposed to those being dictated for them," he said.

At first, these schools were usually private and not well resourced, Maharaj explained. They were organized for families or students who felt their needs weren't being met by traditional education.

That's what Wallner remembers her son struggling with before he attended Lady Evelyn.

"I think the worst of it was when I got a call from the principal and it was 10:30 in the morning," she remembered.

"[The principal] said Miles is having a really hard time today. They had to lock him in the classroom and his learning is done for the day."

But things changed when he transferred to Lady Evelyn, Wallner said.

"They recognize that children are on their own learning journey and that they are there to help facilitate that learning journey."

$20-million hole to fill

Despite the benefits, OCDSB trustee Lyra Evans said alternative schools are costly because the children are transported out of their neighbourhoods. 

"We have a $20-million hole in our current budget," Evans said. "And when you don't have the money, we can't offer programs."

When asked if cutting the program was only about the money, Evans said there have also been concerns about academic performance. 

OCDSB director of education Pino Buffone has told CBC in the past that alternative program students perform below district average. Parents have argued that's an unfair metric, as only French immersion students performed above average. 

In every EQAO subject except Jr-Math, alternative students outperformed regular English students by between two and eight per cent. 

"Just because our English stream is struggling further, that's not to champion the success of the alternative stream," Evans said, "That's to say both of them need to be improved." 

That rationale represents a shift from the initial goal for alternative schools, said Maharaj.

"The point wasn't really to produce a certain level of student outcomes, [it was] to have a completely different approach and philosophy towards education," he explained.

Evans said she thinks that many alternative school principles have been "widely adopted" at the OCDSB's mainstream schools. She said she wouldn't want a student in any school — alternative or not — to face discrimination and hardship.

Wallner agrees schools should be accepting of all students, but thinks families in Ottawa deserve a choice of teaching methods. 

Alternative schools offer families a choice of a different schooling philosophy, she said, one her son Milles said has been "very good for him."

"I'd probably miss the teachers most of all," White said of a world without alternative schools.

"I do really like school ... not just because I want to grow up to be, you know, smart or anything like that. It's just that school is extremely important for everybody in every way."