Parents of boy killed by city bus in Hamilton call on Ontario to better support students with special needs
A Hamilton family is speaking out about their son’s death last month and says the seven-year-old being sent home early from school played a role.
Max Simao was Hit and killed by a city bus Just after 1 pm on December 11th.
His parents, Chris and Emily Simao, were part of a press conference at Queen’s Park on Wednesday and Chris Simao explained that Max has autism and was on a modified program at school. This meant that Max only went to school in the morning, as the school had no staff members to work with Max in the afternoon.
On Thursday, Max’s mother had come to pick him up from school and they were walking home when Max was hit by a bus in the area of Emerald Street N and Wilson Street.
Hamilton police said The actions of the bus driver and the child’s caregiver did not contribute to his death.
Chris Simao said at the news conference, “Our son should be learning and playing in school right now and should be supported in school. If he were, we believe he would still be here today.”
They said, “We feel betrayed and cheated out of our future with Max. We are heartbroken and mad. He should still be with us.”
“We’ve learned that this kind of exclusion is all too common across the province and is a direct result of chronic underfunding that impacts students with special needs the most. So on Thursday, in the middle of the day, Max was not where he had a right to be.”
The family called the revised schedule ‘temporary’
Simoes joined the Ontario Autism Coalition and the Ontario NDP at the news conference to call on the province to address the issue of school exclusions and the revised schedule.
He said it was not the family’s choice for Max to have a revised school schedule.
“In late October, Max’s school informed us that due to staffing challenges, the school was proposing a modified schedule that would have Max attend school in the morning,” she said.
“We were told this would only be a temporary, modified schedule for a few weeks. These weeks stretched on for a month and a half and despite our repeated asking when Max would return to full-day school, we were told it was being sorted out.”
Coalition vice-president Kate Dudley-Logue said in an interview with CBC Kitchener-Waterloo host Craig Norris The Morning EditionThat the issue of students with autism and other special needs being sent home or expelled from school is a growing issue in the province.
“We’re seeing more and more of these, they’re really becoming common,” Dudley-Logue said in an interview Thursday morning.
The Morning Edition – KW8:36Advocates call on province to fund better autism support in schools
A seven-year-old boy died after being hit by a city bus in Hamilton last month. His parents say he was supposed to be in school, but he has autism and school staff couldn’t accommodate him, so his schedule was modified. Kate Dudley-Logue, vice-president of the Ontario Autism Coalition, explains what they’re asking of the province.
She said work done by the coalition to collect data on how many students have been affected shows that nearly one-third of families of students with disabilities have reported experiencing “some type of exclusion” in the form of midday calls to pick up their child due to modified schedules or staffing challenges.
“There are families who experience this several times a week,” Dudley-Logue said. “It may also feel like their child is being left out of recess or field trips and things like that.”
She said there are approximately 350,000 students with disabilities attending Ontario schools, meaning fewer than 120,000 students have experienced exclusion at some point.
He said it puts families in “very precarious circumstances”.
“If you have to constantly take your child with you and keep them at home, when they have the right to go to school every day, how will you maintain employment?” Dudley-Logue said.
The school board’s goal is to keep students in school all day
Jamie Nunn, associate director of instructional services and school improvement for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, said in a statement to CBC News that her thoughts are with the family following the “unimaginable loss of Max,” but said she could not comment on the specific circumstances as to why they made the modified schedule.
Nunn said the board is committed to supporting all students.“through collaborative, personalized planning involving families, schools, centralized board services and, where appropriate, external service providers” and they aim to ensure that “every student is in school for the full learning day.”
“In some circumstances, a student’s program or schedule may look different and reflect the unique needs of the child and/or family,” Nunn said.
Nunn said that in “rare circumstances” a modified program may be needed to support a student and that when that is the case, “a modified program is part of an overall plan, designed in collaboration with families to support the child’s overall well-being and learning.”
“Exclusion is rare and occurs only after all other options have been explored,” Nunn said.
‘‘This could have been prevented,’ says NDP leader.
However, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles said school boycotts “are not new and they are not unusual.”
“We need to do something about the unfairness that students with special needs face because of the lack of proper investment in our schools,” Stiles said at the press conference.
“What happened to Max didn’t happen alone. It was a consequence – a consequence of not having enough support in our classrooms. It could have been prevented. It should never have happened.”
At a separate news conference on Wednesday, Premier Doug Ford was asked about calls for more funding for educational assistants.
She said the province plans to hire 6,000 teachers, including teachers and educational assistants, and said her government has increased funding for autism programs by $700 million since taking office.
Dudley-Logue said she thought Ford was confused by the question because the $700 million is funding for the Ontario Autism Program “which is a completely separate issue.”
As far as recruiting thousands of academic assistants (EAs) was concerned, she was not sure how it would work.
“I find it hard to believe because maybe even in this province there isn’t a pool of that many EAs, but it would certainly be welcomed,” he said.
He said there are about 5,000 schools in the province, so hiring 6,000 staff members would give each school an additional staff member.
“It’s not really going to move the needle very much on individual schools that probably need four times as many EAs to safely support the number of students with complex needs that these schools have,” Dudley-Logue said.
Ax, formerly of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, posted on Twitter after the news conference that he supported the call for funding for special education “that is more accessible and allows greater flexibility to meet the wide range of needs of all children throughout the school year.”
A spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra said the government has provided $3.85 billion in special education funding, an increase of $1.01 billion, or 36 percent, since 2017-18.
Dad says, ‘This should never happen again.’
Chris Simao said Max loved school and smiled when he explained that of their four children, he and his wife Emily had to get Max ready last because otherwise he would “literally push you out the door after getting ready.”
She said the family doesn’t blame the school or the school board for not receiving support, but she said what happened to her son should be a wake-up call for the province to better support educational assistants so all students can attend class the entire day.
Chris Simao said, “We can’t bring Max back, but we can speak his name and tell his story and demand that every child with a disability no longer be excluded, sidelined or sent home.”
“This should never have happened and should never happen again.”
