Christine Grimard
Northern News Services
Wednesday, March 02, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - The Department of Education, Culture and Employment has put restrictions on the more than $20 million provided to schools for inclusive schooling to support special education students.

"For some districts it's a huge change," said Anita Griffore, supervisor of instruction (student support services) for the Yk1 school board. "They would receive the funding and use it any way they wanted. That's no longer doable."

In many cases, the money was being used to hire additional teachers, she said.

Although helpful to the school, this led to minimal specific benefit for students with special needs, said Griffore.

From 2001 to 2006, the funding for children with special needs was assigned on a formula basis.

School districts would receive a set amount of money depending on how many students in each district required support.

Inclusive schooling promotes students with special needs be integrated into a regular classroom, rather than being grouped together in a separate class.

Under the old funding system, the money could be used in any way a district saw fit to fulfill this mandate.

Metro Huculak, superintendent of education for Yk1, said the money could have been used to hire more teachers because this would decrease the student/teacher ratio for all students.

He said inclusive education should "include kids from across the spectrum," from those who are a few years behind, to those having minor difficulties.

The new regulations require that the funds be used to directly benefit students with special needs, such as hiring more teacher's assistants and program support teachers. Teacher's assistants provide more individual attention to students with special needs, while program support teachers work with teachers to develop programs to help support students with special needs.

Cindy Kelly, program support teacher at Mildred Hall school, said the new directives have led to the hiring of more educational assistants.

Griffore said she is also using the money for things such as transportation, nutritional programs, and buying resources such as software for students.