A Nanaimo, B.C., mother whose child is a vulnerable learner says her son is being denied equitable access to education due to the province-wide shortage of education assistants.
Daniel Gardner is blind and has autism and epilepsy.
He has just started kindergarten and mom Ashley Gardner said they have been preparing for this transition since January.
“I would say I thought everything was going actually pretty well up until the day before the first day of school for him,” she told Global News.
“So ever since that day, things have been not going as we would have expected or hoped.”
Gardner said the day before the first day of school, their principal told her that there was no education assistant, or EA, available to support her son so he would not be able to attend school.
She said the principal told her no one had the specific training to manage her son’s seizure condition, even though the school district was made aware in January that Daniel would be attending school.
“You’d think I would have been prepared for like, that type of information, but I was actually quite caught off guard,” Gardner said.
“As a person who also has a disability, I recognize that going into spaces and accessing services isn’t just a given for us. Even though that right’s protected by law, you have to do a lot of legwork.”
Gardner said that her son can only attend on Thursdays and Fridays and works on those days with a “lovely EA” but she said she has not been informed of a plan moving forward to get him support so he can attend full-time.
“Since I started speaking up about Daniel’s experience, I have had an outpouring of support, communication and frustration from parents, educational assistants, teachers, all these people across the province who just, they just want for children to be included in the education,” Gardner said, fighting back tears.
“There are thousands of children across this province who, their voices are not being heard, and there are parents fighting so hard and educators.”
NDP Leader David Eby said Gardner’s situation is unacceptable.
“Every kid needs to be supported in our public school system,” he said.
Eby added that education assistants are a critical part of every classroom but there have been challenges around recruitment and retention.
“I also look forward to having more to say about opportunities we’re going to be providing for full-time educational assistant work in our schools, while simultaneously providing support for parents with before and after school care,” he said.
However, Gardner needs help now.
“Vulnerable learners like my son are not being valued in the same ways that other participants in the society are being valued, and that’s why we have so many shortcomings in resources,” she said.
“I think that you can have policies and you can have agendas for inclusion, but the way inclusion is being executed right now is very disconnected from what it means to be equitable.
“I think that on paper it can be great, but you’re looking at teachers who are working so hard, EAs that are trying to hold down multiple jobs and parents who are having to make huge sacrifices. And at the end of the day, there needs to be accountability for something that is put into policy actually coming into practice.”