Michelle Cousins follows her 14-year-old daughter Colette to school every morning.
Cousins meets his bus at Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School, north of Toronto. He helps Colette and her wheelchair to the ground and parks her van on a nearby street.
She stays there until the end of the school day in case she needs to help her daughter, who has arthrogryposis, which causes joint stiffness and affects her mobility, among other conditions.
“It’s been very, very challenging,” said Cousins, a single mother.
“If there had been a proper assessment, if people had done their job and done it properly, I don’t think we’d be here.”
Every school day since September, Cousins has been sitting in her van in case Colette needs her help going to the bathroom. That’s something educational assistants usually do, but it’s the best option to maintain Colette’s dignity, she says, until a better solution from the school and the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) materializes.
Cousins says she has been told there are only two educational assistants who can lift Colette out of her wheelchair when needed, with no guarantee of trained replacements if they are not. Also, the support equipment the school has has been inoperable or couldn’t fit in the restroom, Cousins says.
Along with other conditions, Colette Cousins, right, has arthrogryposis, which causes joint stiffness and affects her mobility. (Talia Ricci/CBC)
Colette is not the only child with a disability facing accommodation issues in schools across the province. About one in six Ontario students has a disability, according to a prominent advocate, and it’s common for them to face physical, technological and bureaucratic barriers that stand in the way of their education.
Although the school confirmed Colette’s admission in the spring and her accommodation needs were assessed this summer, Cousins says she has resorted to taking on the support role to give her daughter an experience high school as normal as possible amid bureaucratic and labor issues at play. .
Although Colette appreciates her mother’s help, she says she knows it shouldn’t be this way.
“It’s not fair that my mom has to sit in a van,” Colette said.
Who is responsible for the accommodation?
The TCDSB, in an email to CBC Toronto, says it works with parents and students on a case-by-case basis to accommodate special needs in accordance with the province’s main disability rights legislation, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities (AODA).
The board stresses that it cannot discuss individual cases because of privacy laws. But he says Colette High School has an elevator, an accessible restroom, alternative and operable equipment and support staff who are “available and assigned as needed” to help students with disabilities.
However, Cousins refutes most of that and a high-profile advocate for people with disabilities in Ontario says these issues can’t be dealt with at the board level alone.
“Red tape handcuffs teachers and principals and other staff who want to do the right thing,” said David Lepofsky, president of the Accessibility Act Alliance for Ontarians with Disabilities.
“This is emblematic of a much bigger problem, a problem that the provincial government has known about for years.”
Attorney David Lepofsky is president of the AODA Alliance, a group that advocates for the implementation of accessibility standards in Ontario. He says parents of children with disabilities are often “abandoned” to deal with large bureaucracies alone. (Simon Dingley/CBC)
Lepofsky, who is also a member of the provincially appointed Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) Education Standards Development Committee, helped write recommendations for an accessibility standard for all publicly funded schools.
“All of this is available to our children [right now] is for their parents to try to negotiate with the bureaucracy of a school board and, if that doesn’t work, to advocate at their own expense,” Lepofsky said.
Work began in 2017, and the committee released dozens of recommendations in February aimed at creating equipment, support and staffing standards for school boards to better help students with disabilities. The committee also called for a user-friendly process for parents to obtain unique accommodations quickly and easily.
But the committee has heard no word on whether or when they will be implemented, Lepofsky says.
In an email to CBC Toronto, the Ontario Ministry of Education says it is working with the Ministry of Seniors and Accessibility to review the recommendations.
Meanwhile, the ministry says it has consistently added more educational assistants to schools every year since 2018, with more than 1,700 in special education this school year alone.
But that’s not what Cousins says he’s seeing on the ground. At this rate, she says she’ll be in her car next to the school for another four to six weeks, fighting to get the board to approve another way for Colette to attend classes independently, to repair or order additional equipment, or to get the staff necessary to support it.
“I hope there will be some kind of systemic change.”