It's up to the province to alleviate the oppressively long wait times students are facing for special education testing in Hamilton, says the school board's chair.
It's a systemic problem that's been on the board's radar for years, says Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board chair Todd White, but trustees haven't been able to properly tackle it because of unequal funding per student from the province.
'No one kids themselves – this is not a perfect system.'- HWDSB chair Todd White
"No one kids themselves – this is not a perfect system," White said. "We know there is a gap. Trustees have been screaming for additional resources for years."
In a system that's supposed to be equal for all children, there is a growing problem with wait times for what's called psycho-educational testing. The tests are conducted by board psychologists and are used to determine if a child has a learning disability. Without one, a student can't access vital special education resources.
Hundreds of kids are on the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board's waiting list to be tested – but wealthier parents can pay for the testing themselves at a private clinic and buy their way out of the line. The testing is available for a fee of $2,000 to $3,500 – but many parents can't afford that.
That raises issue of unequal access for kids who are most vulnerable – those with learning disabilities in low-income areas who can't afford to pay for private tests.
Board doing what it can with budget, chair says
The board says it does what it can with the resources it has, and has chosen to funnel more money into programming than testing itself. The HWDSB receives $65.1 million a year for special education programs from the ministry, and budgets another $2.8 million in resources on top of that for things like staffing, social workers and educational assistants, White says.
But the longstanding way the Ministry of Education has distributed funding has been crippling Hamilton for years, he says. According to a memo sent by the ministry to the province's directors of education and superintendents of special education, there are vast gaps in the amount of funding each school board receives on a per student basis.
White says the HWDSB has a high level of special needs students compared to other school boards. About 18 per cent of the board's students are considered special needs, he says, compared to about 11 per cent in the city's catholic board.
But the ministry's funding doesn't scale to match that need. In the memo, funding is broken down in terms of how much money is available for each "high needs pupil." The Algoma District School Board, for example, receives the equivalent of $740.53 per student. The Toronto District School Board receives $522.93 per student.
Hamilton's public board, by contrast, receives $443.28 per student – decidedly lower than some school boards that receive over $1,000 per student, but higher than some boards like Peel, which only receives $339.58 per student.
Ministry 'committed to new approach'
White says the ministry has noticed the problem, and is taking steps to alleviate it. "The ministry is committed to implementing a new high needs amount funding approach over the next four years," the memo reads.
The ministry of education did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.
White says that the board has taken steps to bridge the gap in the meantime, like providing special needs services to students before they have an official diagnosis from a psycho-educational test. Parents and teachers within the system however, dispute that.
David Pace-Bonello's son Julian waited two and a half years for a test from the board, while struggling in school the whole while. Pace-Bonello says pediatricians, learning resource teachers and experts from Hamilton's Dyslexia Resource Centre all believed he had dyslexia – but there was still no way to access specialized programming without the test.
"Couldn't we just act as if?" he said. "It doesn't make any sense."
A consultation on budget priorities, including special education, will be tabled at the school board's Monday meeting, followed by a 30-day public consultation.
adam.carter@cbc.ca | @AdamCarterCBC
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