Raymonde Barbeau credits Clifford Bowey Public School with “taming” her daughter, a dark-haired dynamo who can be quite a handful.
Marie-Helene is 14 and has severe developmental delays and autism. She doesn’t speak, and her behaviour used to make it difficult to take her anywhere, says her mom. “It was like she had ants in her pants, she’d be all over the place.” Marie-Helene might run around at family gatherings and remove straws from drinking cans, for example, or have meltdowns.
Today, Marie-Helene holds the hands of her teacher, gently bouncing on a giant ball. Raymonde calls the progress teachers at Clifford Bowey have made with her daughter since she enrolled a decade ago nothing short of miraculous. Marie-Helene can now sit still and listen to instructions.
The 104 students at Clifford Bowey range in age from four to 21, but all have a mental age of around 18 months to two years. Most can’t speak, and communicate by pointing to pictures depicting basic needs — stop, look, like, want, eat — or pushing buttons on voice-activated tablets.
Some students are deaf, blind or medically fragile, prone to seizures or fed through tubes. Most have poor co-ordination, and kids in wheelchairs and giant trikes roam the hallways of the school on Kitchener Avenue.
Educational Assistant Marcy Stickle works with, from left, Christian, Marco and Steven.
It’s a cheerful place, where teachers find lots of reasons to laugh and celebrate every success, whether it’s a boy who has learned to bring a spoon to his lips and eat by himself, or a 20-year-old woman who waves her whole body in delight and sings along to her favourite Abba song. “You are a dancing queen!” yells Anni, 20, in delight to a visitor in her classroom.
The school has loads of special facilities, from touchable murals lining the hallways to an eerie sensory room that offers calming lights and textures. Students use a public swimming pool next door several times a week.
Françoise Slaunwhite says her six-year-old daughter Nathalie used to be terrified of water. “She would literally almost go into shock. Now she’s doing the doggie paddle.”
Nathalie Slaunwhite, 6, with her mom Françoise Slaunwhite at the school library, which is stocked with lots of picture books.
At the school’s greenhouse, children plants seeds and watch them grow. They especially love digging their hands through the dirt, laughs educational assistant Marcy Stickle, who proudly shows off rows of spider plants in plastic pots. “Kids find it very calming in here.”
An industrial kitchen provides opportunities to learn some cooking and cleanup skills, and in the recycling room students sort plastic milk bags to be sent to a charity that makes mats out of them for people in developing countries.
Educational assistant Dawn Glover shows off the recycling and composting area the students use.
Weekly field trips to malls, libraries, museums and restaurants give students a chance to practise life skills like how to behave in public places.
“Our goal is to make them as self-sufficient as possible,” says principal Laurie Kavanagh, although most students need constant supervision and have little sense of personal safety. The doors at the school have alarms in case anyone wanders off.
Karen communicates by tapping pictures on an iPad.
Parents love the school, and mounted a ferocious lobby campaign against a school board proposal to eliminate a 17-day summer school at Clifford Bowey and Crystal Bay, a similar school in the east end of the city.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is facing a budget shortfall of $10 million, and looking for things it can cut. The summer program costs about $400,000 a year, and is not funded by the province.
The summer school gives kids like Marie-Helene and Nathalie a chance to continue their routine and specialized education, ensuring they don’t regress, say their parents. They appear to have won the argument. After listening to parents on Tuesday, trustees recommended saving the summer program, rejecting staff advice to cut all or part of it and bypassing the budget debates scheduled for May and June when they’ll consider other programs that could be reduced or eliminated.
A final decision will be made March 29.
It’s an example of just how difficult and divisive the budget trimming will be. Something has to be cut, whether it’s ESL and learning support teachers, the board’s outdoor education centres, or continuing education classes for adults, all of which have been singled out by staff as possibilities.
Which children are most deserving? Parents of disabled children at Clifford Bowey have pointed to other programs that receive optional funding, from the international baccalaureate program for top academic students to Canterbury High School for the arts, programs for high-performance athletes, and summer school for high school kids who need to pick up credits. As budget debates continue, no doubt the parents of kids who benefit from those programs will be heard, too.
From left, parents Raymonde Barbeau and Francoise Slaunwhite with principal Laurie Kavanagh in front of one of the touchable murals that line the school hallway.
