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Kelowna  

Son falls through cracks

A Kelowna mother is at her wits end with a local elementary school over, what she says, is a complete lack of support for her young son's ADHD.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she has had to leave work to get her six-year-old from school four times in the last two weeks, and feels the school is simply trying to get rid of him rather than help.

“The solution was, he needs to get out of here, not much else,” she said.

Her son began kindergarten last year and had a rough time in the school environment.

Part of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, according to the mother, "is having very high impulse, and being quick to react instead of thinking through your thoughts, so his first reaction would be to hit.”

“They were threatening to kick him out and eventually did kick him out. This was before he was diagnosed in December, we weren’t sure what was going on.”

The mother said her son’s teacher filed a Workers’ Compensation Board claim stemming from an incident where he had grabbed both of her wrists.

Her son was diagnosed with ADHD in December, prescribed Ritalin and Biphentin, and given a certified education assistant to work with one-on-one.

“With medication and an aide he did really well,” the mother said. “We weren’t without problems but it definitely lessened.”

Her son successfully finished kindergarten and started grade one this September. His mother requested a specific teacher for this year, one her son had known for years.

“I requested a teacher who made eye contact with him everyday. He knew who she was, he knew where her class was,” she said. “They very much had a connection, which is a very strong thing for ADHD.”

She said this request was denied but doesn’t know why. Hugh Gloster, the superintendent for School District 23, said he is not able to comment on specific cases.

In addition, the certified education assistant her son had the previous spring would no longer be working with him.

“He had an aide last year, I was told there was no chance that would happen this year, that there’s no funding for it, and it was a miracle that it happened last year,” she said.

Gloster said there are fewer than 400 certified education assistants and 22,000 students in the district so the schools need to work with what they have.

“We’ve got parents out there who would like to see us have a lot more resources and we understand that,” Gloster said. “We obviously have to work within the reality of the budgets that we have available to us, and the personnel. In some cases those positions are hard to fill.”

The mother said her son needs that extra support to do well in a school environment.

“There’s no support in there … he’s being put into a room where he has little fires to put out all the time and he’s just not able to process it unfortunately,” she said. “He’s just not your typical kid.”

She also said she feels like the school is putting her child’s behaviour on her, rather than trying to help.

“I’m being told basically, ‘this better not be a repeat of last year, well you know where this is going if it continues,’” she said. “Not necessarily verbal threats, but almost.”

She is a single mother trying to support her son, and being forced to leave work to pick him up from school has been problematic.

“It’s never our intent to exclude children from school on an ongoing basis, these would be short term steps,” Gloster said, regarding children being sent home.

The mother said because of her son’s turnaround last spring, a ‘behavioral designation’ was never completed, and a proper plan was never developed for him. She is going through the process now to get a plan in place for him, but has found the process trying.

“As a parent I am very much feeling strong-armed from the school district system,” she said. “It’s hard to get people’s numbers, it’s hard to know where to go, it’s a very lonely position to be in.”

She said there must be other kids having similar problems, and would love to see more resources become available.

“If I’m having this problem with my six-year-old son in the schools, I can only imagine every kid that doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter box is going through the same process.”

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