What we know as OCDSB considers more special-needs students in mainstream classes

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As Ottawa’s largest school board faces the last round of public engagement heading into an overhaul of its elementary school programs, some hints have been dropped about what the changes may mean for integrating students with special needs into mainstream classes.

As part of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s elementary program review, every specialized program will be under the microscope, from French immersion to programs for students with development delays, with changes to start in the fall of 2025.

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Last week, a report on the general learning program (GLP), one of 12 specialized programs available to elementary students, was presented to trustees. The GLP offers academics and life skills to students with mild intellectual disabilities.

The report offered a glimpse into the thinking behind the changes in classroom integration and inclusion — and what those changes might look like.

Q: Why change the existing system?

A: Administrators say it’s about equity. The review is an opportunity to expand on the positive practices that are currently in place while also considering structures through an “equity lens,” says Stacey Kay, the OCDSB’s general manager of learning support services.

Special education identification, streaming and pathways are not free from bias and often lead to the disproportionate representation of historically marginalized groups, including multilingual learners, usually newcomers, according to research, she says.

The GLP report also found it’s rare for a student from the GLP to move to a mainstream class. Often these decisions are made in the second year of kindergarten and in Grade 4, and choosing that path limits opportunities in secondary school and post-secondary education, Kay says.

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Teachers and education assistants have also reported that working in specialized classrooms can be a very isolating experience.

Meanwhile, money spent on the existing model has restricted the level of investment in community schools.

“When we think about the way we’ve structured special education program and services in the district, we’ve channeled a phenomenal amount of resources into a specialized program class model,” says Peter Symmonds, the OCDSB’s superintendent of learning support services. “Looking at creative ways to reallocate these resources would change the level of support that’s available to students in the regular classrooms.”

Life skills, job coaching and daily living skills have to be built into the revised model, he says. An inclusion model will require work and tweaking, and it will have to be continually reassessed to ensure it’s meeting the need of disabled students.

Q: What are some of the problems with the existing system? 

A: There are many positive aspects of the GLP program, including that it fosters a sense of belonging and community, and it allows students to develop life skills, Kay says. However, the structure creates a environment that “inherently lowers expectations for learning,” she told trustees.

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Students with disabilities have individual education plans (IEPs), which include modified learning expectations. Parents and caregivers sometimes don’t understand the accumulation of credits and what it means for acquiring a secondary school diploma, she says.

“We have heard several reports that  parents and guardians are surprised that their students are not on track to earning credits and are certainly surprised that they are not set to gain an Ontario secondary school diploma.”

There is also growing concern about the power of labels in terms of lowering expectations for academic success, Symmonds says. The definitions created by the Ministry of Education are extremely dated, he told trustees.

“Currently we know more about education and meeting the standards of students with a mild intellectual disability than we knew before. We also know that the research would lean towards academic outcomes being at least as good or better for a students with a mild intellectual disability in a regular classroom.”

Q: What’s the difference between integration and inclusion? 

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A: There is an important distinction. Meaningfully including and supporting a student’s disability-related needs is not the same as sharing place in space with other students all the time.  

Overwhelmingly, studies have found that educational outcomes are improved when students are served in inclusive settings, Symmonds told trustees.

However, some parents argue that being in a segregated program has helped their child to thrive.

Meredith Willis Vautour’s son Alex, 17, is a student in the GLP program at Sir Guy Carleton Secondary School and his family is seeing the benefits.

“He’s no longer the kid in the classroom who has an assistant when the others do not,” she says.

“He is not sitting there listening to lessons being taught to the class that he cannot understand, while he is being taught something else. This style of inclusion only served to teach him that he was ‘less than’ the others surrounding him. For Alex, inclusion actually resulted in exclusion. In the GLP, he’s part of a community.”

Even though her family lives in Barrhaven, Sonja Elliott says the decision to send her son Travis to a GLP placement in Orléans was a “no-brainer” when the other choice was to keep her child in the back of a classroom on a rocking chair with a fidget toy in hand and a cat book to read, she told trustees.

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“When we found the GLP program, Travis’s school life changed for the better. He came home from the first day and said, ‘Mom, there’s other autistic kids like me — I’m not the only one!’” Elliott said, adding he was much more engaged in the classroom, he started to read and he finally had the support that was always lacking in his regular classroom.

Alicia Vrieswyk’s daughter, Lexi, is seven years old. She is in a primary special-needs class for students with mild intellectual disabilities with 10 students and is to enter a GLP class in the fall of 2025.

“Her peers aren’t the kids who are the same age,” Vrieswyk says. “That’s the whole reason for these classrooms. Even when we’re in a social setting, Lexi gears to playing with three- and four-year-olds, even though she’s seven. She doesn’t relate to seven-year-olds. It’s not that she can’t make friends. These kids won’t gravitate towards her.”

It has taken years for parents to come to terms with the fact that their child is on a different path — and that’s OK, says Kate Dudley-Logue, mother of two children with autism: Ruby, 13, who is in the mainstream system, and Desmond, 10, who is in an autism class.

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“It is not an easy choice for a parent to choose this pathway,” Dudley-Logue says. “Hearing the news that your child would take the special education route is heartbreaking. The route may be different, but, ultimately, all a parent wants is for their child to live to their best potential. We want them to live their best lives.”

Q: What would a new model look like?

A: That’s not clear yet. A proposal for a new model won’t come until next fall, but some ideas have been mentioned.

“I think it would be exciting to contemplate what what a model could be that grows and learns from the successes of our current model and recreating those structures in many more of our community-based schools,” Kay says.

“Inclusion doesn’t necessarily mean same space, same air all the time,” Symmonds says. “There could be opportunities in a revision model for resource withdrawal or resource assistance to help students.”

That is controversial in some circles. Dudley-Logue says that, if the point is to make students feel included, withdrawing them from the classroom can be stigmatizing.

Meanwhile, the “co-teaching model,” has multiple teachers in a space that are available to students with different needs. It has the benefit of not singling out students with disabilities.

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“We all have days where we needs a little bit of extra support for lot of different reasons,” Kay says. “So it normalizes that process and acknowledges that it’s not just because of a label or a different learning style.”

Vrieswk believes “reverse inclusion” may have some potential for children like Lexi. Instead of having children who are easily overwhelmed remain in a busy classroom, the alternative would be to have a small number of mainstream students at a time go into a specialized classroom.

“It’s not overwhelming. I think that’s a great option,” she says.

One model supported a group of 12 students who transitioned from the GLP classes to the regular program at their community high school, based on a a foundation of high expectations and differentiated support, Kay told trustees. The students in that group were on track to collectively earn 87 out of 96 possible credits at the end of Grade 9.

Some parents argue that acquiring high school credits is not the point of education for their children.

“The acquisition of essential life skills is equally important,” Willis Vautour says. “For students like my son, learning to navigate the public transit is a huge accomplishment, and deserves equal acknowledgement and celebration as a student who gets the highest mark in Grade 12 university calculus.”

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Q: Parents have raised questions about students with dysregulated behaviour disrupting mainstream classrooms and forcing teachers to evacuate classrooms. Could a new system prevent it? 

A: Symmonds does not deny that there will continue to be episodes of dysregulation, the inability to control emotional responses.  Students need to develop executive functioning skills and self-regulation skills. Occupational therapists, for example, can help students who have sensory sensitivities, Symmonds says.

There is a need for a “right-size approach,” he says. “That requires support and the reallocation of resources that are currently channeled towards a specialized learning class model.”

According to a quick calculation, there is the potential to release the equivalent of 120 full-time teachers and between 170 and 200 education assistants for the revision model, Symmonds says.

Change requires a significant cultural shift, he told trustees.

“One of our ongoing struggles has been that you can’t do this work with a foot in both camps. There is research that would suggest, if there is a place to send a students, it reduces the intrinsic motivation to meet the needs of that student. The OCDSB has a place where we send students with mild intellectual disabilities and it’s not in the regular classroom.”

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Q: Is this about saving money?

A: Board officials insist changes will only occur if it’s what’s best for students. “We’re in the listening phase right now as part of the elementary review process,” director of education Pino Buffone says.

Some parents are skeptical.

“Anyone can recognize that it’s about money,” Dudley-Logue says. “It you were doing inclusion correctly, it would likely cost more money. Inclusion without proper accommodation is abandonment.”

Q: What’s next? 

Three more public engagement meetings on elementary program review are scheduled for Wednesday:

• Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School, 149 Berrigan Dr., 7 to 8:30 p.m.
• Sawmill Creek Elementary School, 3400 D’Aoust Ave., 6:30 to 8 p.m.
• Avalon Public School, 2080 Portobello Blvd., 6:30 to 8 p.m. 

Feedback will be reviewed over the summer and proposals will start to shape the plan this fall, with a preliminary report to trustees in September and additional reports in October, with more public input. and recommendations for a new program delivery model in November, to be approved by trustees.

After that, planning will begin with implementation starting in the fall of 2025.

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