A provincial lifeline

Personal family stories lie at the very heart of the movement to address and meet the needs of children facing severe learning challenges in the school system. [...] The overarching mandate of the system, enshrined in the NS Education Department’s mission, is “to provide excellence and training for personal fulfillment and for a productive and prosperous society.” Since 2001, the province’s Special Education Policy has reaffirmed its official commitment to “inclusive schooling,” but allows for a continuum of program supports, including “options in programming [...] Applying the same statistical analysis, the numbers of potential students requiring full-day LD services in each of the remaining school boards would be from 302 to 603 in Cape Breton–Victoria Board, from 290 to 580 in Annapolis Valley Board, from 147 to 293 in the South Shore Board, 146 to 291 in the Strait Board, from 139 to 278 in the Tri-County Board, and from 93 to 185 in the Acadien provinci [...] The relocation of Bridgeway Academy to a larger Dartmouth school campus and the intensive lobbying efforts of parents, individually and collectively through the Equal Education Association (EANS) were critical in getting a Tuition Support on the public agenda (Rhonda Brown Interview). [...] The TSP was unique in that it provided, for the first time, a provincial option for students with learning disabilities who met certain eligibility requirements, qualifying them for access to “specialized programming and services outside the framework of the Nova Scotia public school system (NSP).” Right from the beginning, the explicit intent of the program was to “provide students with the oppor