WATCH ABOVE: It’s back to school for disabled students at the Mackay Centre, but it’ll be one of their last at the Decarie location. Global’s Kelly Greig finds out what the centre has planned for its new home.
MONTREAL – Jiong Zhou’s daughter Angela loves school.
She’s six-years-old, and severely disabled, but that doesn’t stop her.
Zhou explained the Mackay Centre is the only place his daughter can feel comfortable with other children.
READ MORE: $22M for the Mackay Centre and Philip E. Layton schools
“Even kids with special needs have social needs,” he told Global News.
“Here, at school she can be around her peers and have a very fun time with them.”
Angela and the 170 other students at the centre arrived back at school Monday to big news.
In 2018, the children will move to a new $23.4 million state-of the art school.
It’s a cost that’s worth it just to meet the needs of the students; the Mackay Centre is part of the English Montreal School Board.
“If you visit some of our classrooms now there’s not a lot of space for wheelchairs to move around,” said EMSB chairperson Angela Mancini.
“In a classroom you could fit 25 students. Here you can only fit 10.”
The school will be built on land already owned by the EMSB, on the corner of Madison and Terrebonne streets – the site of the old Somerled Elementary school, which was closed in 2000.
The Mackay Centre will share a space with French elementary school École Marc Favreau.
READ MORE: Mackay Centre School struggles to find more space and services
Staff, students and parents have been clamouring for more space since 2011, when they were told the lease was up and they’d have to find a new home.
“These parents deal with difficulties and issues on a daily basis and wondering where your child is going to go to school on top of that insecurity, it’s unsettling,” said Joanne Charron from the school’s Board of Directors.
Charron’s own son was a student at the school.
He suffers from cerebral palsy and can’t speak.
The Mackay Centre provided him with the technology to be able to communicate.
“My son was eight-years-old the first time I heard him speak – although electronically,” she said.
“They sent him home with this device and I hooked him up and he started to use his head because he can’t use his hands, frantically banging to get a message out.”
“The first words I heard my son tell me was ‘I love you, Mom.'”
While it’s one of the last back to school days at the Decarie location, parents, students and staff are looking forward to the first of many in their brand new building.
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