Special education needs studied

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A proposed five-year plan to develop special education programs for First Nation children in the Sioux Lookout District completed its first phase in January.

Last November, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) approved Sioux Lookout area chiefs to use $240,000 previously earmarked to pay for a special education needs assessment covering the 24 schools supported by the District Education Planning Committee (DEPC). An additional $72,000 was approved for DEPC to develop a special education policy covering the 24 schools.

Ifka Filipovich, project co-ordinator at the year-old Kwayaciiwin Resource Centre, said, "All we have approval on, at this point in time, is the money from the chiefs themselves. They've pooled their special education policy money, $3,000 each, and they pooled $10,000 each to pay for these first two phases. We've got $90,000 from Health Canada. We submitted the proposal to Health Canada, Indian Affairs and HRDC (Human Resources Development Canada), but we don't have a response on year two, three, four, five. All we have so far is approval on the testing phase."

An INAC press release indicates funding approval for years two to five hinges on early program results.

The special education study is being developed in response to recommendations in a 2002 report prepared by the National Working Group on Education.

Kwayaciiwin was set up by INAC, DEPC and First Nation and community leaders to provide education support to Sioux Lookout-area students.

Phase one, which began last November, assessed the academic performance of grades one to eight students in mathematics and language. The assessments in phase one and two is the first step in helping the DEPC to determine the cost and types of services that would benefit special needs children in their communities.

The planning committee members, which include Elders, represent more than two dozen bands and tribal councils in the Sioux Lookout area.

Of 2000 regional students, 313 were selected to take part in phase one in Sandy Lake. The study concluded that 86 per cent of the students were two-and-a-half years behind academically.

Filipovich said part of the reason for the poor scholastic performance across schools in the North is a history of under funding.

Phase 2, which is also taking place in Sandy Lake, will look at factors that may be connected to academic performance.

"That's going to be mental health as well cognitive development and things like FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) because we need to separate how many kids have physical learning disabilities, psychological and mental health problems," said Filipovich, who also cited Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as another possible link to poor school grades.

Assessing student education needs is problematic in northwestern Ontario where testing services are not readily available. In a region of isolated reserves where only two are accessible by road, sending a child out of town for testing is time consuming and costly.

"Many of our kids getting testing done is a real problem because of the cost of flying a child out from Sandy Lake to Winnipeg to have a battery of tests by a number of specialists. Then you've got to have escorts and all that kind of thing, and so just assessment alone is expensive. It takes six months to get the reports back (and produce them in) laymen's terms. By that time, the teacher and the principal have changed. The kids fall through the cracks continuously. We have unassessed kids; we have kids that are supposed to be checked every three months and that just does not happen," said Filipovich.

It is hoped that in the next four years, not only will the special education proposal identify the needs, there will also be a system devised to ensure that services will be delivered, said Filipovich.