Carousel evening celebrates 30 years of belonging

Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board
News Release

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There is still time to register for the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board’s annual Special Education Carousel Evening, taking place at 6 p.m. on May 19 at St. Joseph-Scollard Hall Catholic Secondary School.

This year’s theme, 30 Years of Belonging, celebrates the successes enjoyed by students with special needs and their families since the passing of Bill 82, legislation which was part of a widespread movement towards giving all students with special needs the right to a publicly funded education. On December 12, 1980, an Act to Amend the Education Act, Bill 82, came into effect in Ontario and, for the first time, school boards across the province were required to provide special education programs and services to exceptional pupils or to purchase these services through an agreement with another publicly funded school board.

Barbara McCool, current Chair of the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board, former and long-time Chair of the NPSC Special Education Advisory Committee, and parent of a student with special needs, remembers what this meant for the Nipissing District Roman Catholic Separate School Board. “When we learned of the Bill, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us to provide our children not only with a publicly funded education, but with a publicly funded education in a Catholic education system,” she said of a team of administrators and 6 other local couples with children with special needs who, at the time, were enrolled at West Bay Field School. “We had the minimum seven students to form a classroom in a regular school, so we formed a committee and got to work. The hours were long, the negotiations were challenging at times, but this was a labour of love for all of us. We wanted the best for our own children and for children with special needs all over the province. They deserved it as much as anyone else.”

In September of 1984, the Nipissing District Roman Catholic Separate School Board hired a special education teacher and an educational assistant for the seven students enrolled in the Board’s first Learning Assistance Centre at St. Hubert School.

Today, the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board has five Learning Assistance Centres – in John XXIII School, Our Lady of Sorrows School, St. Alexander School, St. Hubert School, and St. Joseph-Scollard Hall Catholic Secondary School. NPSC takes pride in offering a wide variety of other programs inside and outside the regular classroom across many of its Catholic schools to provide individualized educational programs for all students with exceptionalities, including visual and hearing impairments, giftedness, Autism Spectrum Disorder, learning disabilities, behavioural, physical and developmental exceptionalities.

For more information on the history of special education in Ontario, visit: http://www.seac-learning.ca/unit1.htm
Carousel Evening 2011 will feature a keynote address by Dr. Sheila Bennett of Brock University and a variety of free workshops addressing timely topics across the special education spectrum.

For more information on workshop selection and for easy online registration, go to www.npsc.ca.

To reserve your free childcare, call 705-472-1201 ext. 2261.

Last chance registrations begin at 6 p.m., keynote address at 6:30 p.m. and workshops at 8 p.m.

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