Ottawa - Ottawa Catholic School Board

The following historical perspective
of special education both
provincially and in the Ottawa-
Carleton Catholic School Board has been
prepared by Michael Baine, Superintendent
of Special Education and Student Services.
The delivery of programs and
services to students with various
“exceptionalities” has undergone dramatic
changes in the past 50 years. These changes
reflect similar experiences throughout
Ontario and, indeed, North America.
While all school boards and districts have
witnessed these changes, Catholic school
boards in Ontario have had an even more
unique history.
Up to the 1950s, parents of
children with various disabilities were fairly
much on their own in finding educational
placements. Other than some provincial
schools for students who were deaf and/or
blind, parents often had no alternatives for
their children. After 1950, a number of
boards and schools did implement a variety
of special programs and in many cases,
they were exemplary. However, because
students did not have a legal right to
services, the availability of special programs
was inconsistent in some areas and totally
lacking in others. Faced with severe
financial inequities, Catholic boards in
Ontario were particularly without special
programs.
During the 1960s and 1970s, a
number of developments were taking place
throughout North America. The Civil Rights
Movement, advances in research and socialpolitical
movements to close various
residential institutions for people with
developmental, physical and mental
disabilities started to impact on the
education scene. The philosophy of bringing
all people into the mainstream and into
publicly funded organizations, like school
boards, was strongly advocated by numerous
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groups and individuals. There were
increases in the number of specialized
programs for students with disabilities and
these programs were modeled along the
latest research on how students learn. Still,
Catholic school boards lagged behind their
public school counterparts, given financial
restraints.
With the passage of Bill 82 in
Ontario in 1980, all the rules changed. For
the first time, all students, regardless of
their disabilities, had a legal right to attend
publicly funded schools. This momentous
legislation created changes in practice and
policy which continue to the present day.
Later, Ontario initiatives such as Regulation
181 in 1998, which compelled boards to
consider regular classroom placement as
a first consideration, quickened the pace
of more fully including students with
disabilities into their own community
schools. The lines between “regular” and
“special” education became blurred and the
philosophy of “inclusion” became the Ontario
Government’s guiding direction. The
resource document, Education for All,
released in 2005, firmly established the fact
and philosophy that students with special
needs are and should be included in the
regular classrooms of Ontario.
Catholic school boards, after the
passage of Bill 82 in 1980, were under the
same legal obligations to provide programs
and services as other school boards; however,
a continuing funding disparity delayed the
legislation’s full implementation in Catholic
schools. With full funding to Catholic high
schools in 1984 and fair funding in 1998,
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when grants became the same for every
student in Ontario, Catholic school boards
were able to fully meet the needs of all their
students.
In the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic
School Board and its predecessor boards, the
provincial history, described above, played
itself out in a similar fashion. Until the
advent of fair and equal funding, a process
beginning in 1984, Catholic high school
students with disabilities received most
of their special education programs in
the coterminous public school board.
That transfer of students no longer occurs.
A strong history of cooperation and
collaboration has existed among all the local
school boards in Ottawa and continues to
the present. Programs for students with
developmental disabilities were designed
according to needs and offered by the boards
for students regardless of their jurisdiction.
The Dependently Handicapped Program and
the Assessment Kindergarten Classes were
offered by the Catholic boards, while the
public boards provided specialized settings
at Crystal Bay and Clifford Bowey Schools.
While this sharing continues today, even
without the inter-board political
organization of the past, boards have
continued to develop programs so that all
their students can stay within their own
community schools alongside their siblings
and friends.
Undoubtedly, the delivery of
special education programs and services
will continue to evolve in the years to come.
The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board
proudly celebrates its inclusionary practices
and has made them the Board-wide focus for
2004-06. A three-year (2006-09) “roadmap,”
outlining where the Board will go next with
regard to special education, will be released
for consultation in the fall of 2006 to help
ensure that the Board continues to provide
the best possible programs for all of its
students.