Within an hour of dropping my son off at junior kindergarten, I’m called to pick him up. The excitement of the first day of school quickly gives way to sadness and embarrassment. He was sitting on a chair in the office sucking his thumb while the secretary chastised him for misbehaving. I feel the need to chastise him, too; to signal we don’t condone whatever it is he did. But on the steps of the school after we leave the office, I kneel in front of him. I tell him he’s a wonderful boy. I promise him we’ll figure school out together.
It’s a promise I haven’t been able to keep.
My twin boys, now in Grade 5, have autism and complex needs. At one point, both of them were not attending school full-time because the public system does not support them.
These days, with one of my son’s schools, we’ve developed an “understanding.” I pick him up early. Sometimes earlier if I get the call. And I always get the call.
My body exists in a permanent state of readiness, waiting to be told my child is “having a hard day.” The euphemisms vary, but the message is always the same: get here. Every time I collect my boy, I see him as I did on that first day of JK: confused, overwhelmed, trying to comfort himself.
As someone in the school system, this is both true and heartbreaking. We simply do not have the correct supports in place to provide a safe environment for all students when studentswith complex needs are present, and it always comes down to the same thing: money. The personel isn’t there, the supervision isn’t there, the training isn’t there and the policy isn’t there. We need specialists. We need people attending to the complex needs. They cannot be a time-sink for classroom teachers, untrained in dealing with students with complex needs, who already have students fighting, stealing each others stuff and otherwise misbehaving. And when someone calls out, there needs to be a plan in place other than “call mom and tell them to come pick up their kid.”
Smaller class sizes, having specialists available and in place, and clear policy are all required to give the students the inclusive environment they need without actively detreacting from, and in some cases even endangering, all children in the classroom. When one of the less well-behaved kids takes advantage of the classroom teachers attention being placed on the student with complex needs whose support staff called out sick and does something stupid resulting in harm to themselves, or others in the class, who do you think winds up with blame? Spoiler: it’s not the district, and it’s not the government.
The whole issue breaks my heart, because the only winning move is “please stop under funding schools and passing the blame,” which falls on deaf ears, or worse, becomes a part of the “starve the beast” strategy pushing towards privatization.