HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)

Mr. James DeWolfe (Vice-Chairman)

Mr. Mark Parent

Mr. Peter Christie

Mr. Graham Steele

Mr. David Wilson (Sackville-Cobequid)

Mr. Keith Colwell

Mr. Michel Samson

Mr. Wayne Gaudet

In Attendance:

Ms. Mora Stevens

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Jacques Lapointe

Auditor General

Ms. Elaine Morash

Assistant Auditor General

Department of Education

Mr. Dennis Cochrane

Deputy Minister

Mr. Darrell Youden

Senior Executive Director, Corporate Services

Mr. Mike Sweeney

Senior Executive Director, Public Schools

Ms. Ann Power

Director, Student Services

Annapolis Valley School Board

Ms. Cindy Giffen-Johnson

Coordinator of Student Services

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2006

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

9:00 A.M.

CHAIR

Ms. Maureen MacDonald

VICE-CHAIRMAN

Mr. James DeWolfe

MADAM CHAIR: Good morning. I would like to call the committee to order, please. Today we have with us witnesses from the Department of Education concerning special education and school user fees. On behalf of the committee, I would like to welcome our witnesses. We'll proceed in the usual manner, with introductions from the members of the committee and the Auditor General and staff from his office. Then Mr. Cochrane can introduce the witnesses from the department, and the floor will be open for a brief statement from the department and we will then proceed with questions. Could we start with introductions.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. DENNIS COCHRANE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'll introduce the delegation here from the Department of Education. On my far right is Darrell Youden, who is the Senior Executive Director of Corporate Services. Next to Darrell is Cindy Giffen-Johnson, who is the Student Services Coordinator of the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board. On my immediate right is Ann Power, who is the Director of Student Services for the Department of Education. On my left is Mike Sweeney, who is the Senior Executive Director of Public Schools.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Our topics that we were assigned were special education and school fees. I will attempt to address both those topics in my opening remarks and, obviously, open the floor to any questions that you might have.

In 2005 and 2006, we invested about $66 million, as the Department of Education, in special education. However, the boards have seen fit, over the period of time, to reallocate resources and so on, that they're given, and altogether, about $120 million are spent on special education services. Now this is in addition to the per pupil expenditure that every student in the system has assigned to them and their board as a result of the budgetary process.

This year, we're into what we call year four of Learning for Life. We had a Learning for Life I document, which was planned for three years, and then there was a Learning for Life II document, which was designed to overlap. So, in other words, the third year of Learning for Life I became the first year of Learning for Life II, and 2006-07 will become the second year of Learning for Life II.

I'm referring to Learning for Life because many of the documents have additional resources for special education in the Province of Nova Scotia. We feel we've made significant progress. We believe that our student needs, our special needs services have improved significantly, and like any other service provided, it can always have more improvement, and I'm sure many of the people who are receiving services or the parents of children who are receiving services would like to see improvement as well.

In the last four years, we've added approximately 150 new specialists to the system who are providing special education services in the Province of Nova Scotia. One of the things we do, and you may have questions about, is we track the ratios of core professional services and service providers in the education system. We had a group called the Special Education Implementation Review Committee - we can never get simple titles. As a result, there were 22 interested parties with regard to special education services in Nova Scotia. They made a series of recommendations in their report, and one of the recommendations involved the ratio of specialists in the system, and they set what would be a desirable ratio and then we've tracked them ever since by the province and by board.

For example, the speech-language pathologists said there should be one speech- language pathologist for every 2,000 children in the system. In 2005-06, our tracking has shown that we've almost reached that total, in that we have one speech-language pathologist for every 2,093 children in the system. On school psychologists, the ratio they felt that would be desirable would be one psychologist for every 2,500 children, and in 2005-06 we've actually been able to beat that ratio and we now have one school psychologist for every 2,396 children.

A number of other things have been done, and some of the questions that were asked last year related to tracking of incidences of behaviour in the system. We've introduced a positive and effective behavioural support program which has a whole number of components, but one of the components that it does have is it collects information about inappropriate behaviour and how it's dealt with - about half of the schools in Nova Scotia have been in-serviced.

We have pilot programs in 16 of the schools, but also pilot programs in two of the boards with regard to the on-line tracking of the data and so on. We now have a full-time person who inputs the board data and produces a report back to each of the boards with regard to the incidents that have been tracked and so on. This will give us reliable suspension data, and that will become part of the provincial student information system which is currently under development in the Province of Nova Scotia; in other words, with regard to the in-servicing, that program will be rolled out to 200 schools in the Fall of 2006.

One of the other areas that has been of interest to a number of members is the English as a Second Language support program. We had, last year in our budget, $350,000 for the first time to assign to the school boards to reduce some of the costs associated with providing English as a Second Language services to immigrants who would be attending our school system in the Province of Nova Scotia.

One thing that must be remembered is there's a difference between international students and immigrant children. We have an International Student Program for which the people are charged tuition, and the boards get the money for that and therefore are expected to take the tuition money and provide support services for those children. The English as a Second Language students not only get the $350,000, but the per pupil expenditure in the Province of Nova Scotia as well because they're in the board numbers. This year we have another budget submission in for 2006-07 to enhance that $350,000. This year in the distribution of that $350,000, about $302,000 went to the Halifax Regional School Board. It's based on where the students are located and the populations, and therefore the distribution takes place.

In school fees - it's one of the topics you wanted us to discuss - last year we made it very clear that we were going to focus on fees that limited students' access to the public school program. We made that commitment here at the Public Accounts Committee. We put out a set of guidelines in September 2005 to the school system that caused a bit of consternation because a number had already sent out the suggestion as to what kind of fees they were going to collect, but the system responded very quickly, made a number of adjustments, and we're about to roll out the final policy well in advance of the opening of school in September 2006. Basically the interim policy outlined a number of things, and we've now put the permanent policy in draft form.

There has been a significant amount of consultation with people in the system, and what you're going to find as a result of that policy - and I think we distributed a copy in some of the information that was sent to you a couple of weeks ago - the school boards will allow to charge reasonable fees for other things other than fees that are associated with access to the school program. For example, they can charge a reasonable fee for a locker, a reasonable fee for student council activities, extracurricular activities, athletic fees and so on, but the school advisory council, parent groups, and student councils are there to advise the school with regard to those fees - our policy does not enter into that area. Our policy really focuses on the minister's commitment in the Education Act to provide free access to the public school program, and you'll find a number of changes have come about as a result of that change in policy.

We feel that the Special Education improvements are working. More students with special needs are graduating from high school, and another division of our department provides support for those students as they go into post-secondary. All students, including those with special needs, benefit from Learning for Life I and Learning for Life II. A number of those initiatives are general across the board. For example, this year we will see the class size in Grade 3 capped at 25. In 2007, we'll see Grade 4 capped at 25 - and that's not a special needs measure, it's a measure that helps every child in the system, as it dictates the number of children that can be in a P1, P2, P3 and P4 class in Nova Scotia.

Also we have, obviously, a lot more books in the system, more resources and more technology, all of which assist all of our children. As I mentioned, with regard to the fee policy, students will no longer pay for items or services that are required for a particular course in Nova Scotia.

That concludes my opening remarks with regard to those two topics. I'd be more than pleased to entertain any questions or assign your questions to a member of the team from the Department of Education that's here today.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. The floor is now open to the NDP caucus. I recognize Dave Wilson.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you, I welcome you to the committee. Definitely, education has been very important for many Nova Scotians. It's right up there with their concerns with health care in the province. Recently, a lot of the media has been around the high tuition costs and education costs for post-secondary education. A lot of the calls I receive - and I'm sure that members of the committee receive from their constituents - are around the public system, especially around those kids that need additional resources, additional help. Their parents often call my office, and I'm sure members of the committee have also received similar calls.

My first few questions will revolve around the government's commitment to addressing special needs and allocating the resources needed in the public system to address, and hopefully correct, many years of neglect that we've seen over the years.

Back in June 2001, the publication of the Special Education Implementation Review Committee Report, also known as the SEIRC Report - I'll call it that for the time being - government was very enthused and promoted the fact that this committee was struck, it was paid for by government. At the time, the Minister of Health, in her news release stated that, "The Nova Scotia Department of Education is seeking public input as it reviews the implementation of its special education policy . . . 'We have a broadly representative committee that needs to hear from everyone with an interest in helping special needs students to thrive in Nova Scotia's schools,' . . ."

So the government took the initiative back in 2000 to initiate the SEIRC Report, or the committee, to come back to government with a report. There were 34 recommendations with this report, so my first question to the deputy minister is, do you support the findings from the committee and from the report that this committee presented to government?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, I do, and we do as a department. We always have some debate about a report that comes from 22 interest groups, but we had orchestrated the report, or the committee, to bring forward the report. What you see in Learning for Life I and II is a continuing response to that report. The minister didn't respond immediately, but Learning for Life I was formulated as a result and provided a number of initiatives that were in direct response to what was included in the report, and Learning for Life II followed that up as well.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): One of the things you stated was there were about 20 interest groups. In my view, that is the best type of report we could have, that government could have, is from a group that crosses so many different areas. It was an initiative of the government to do that and to seek the input from the public and I think they did that. They toured the province - I'm sure they incurred a cost, I'm not sure what it was, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - to do this report and to ask for this committee to do the work to bring back recommendations.

To date, how many of those 34 recommendations has the government adopted or implemented?

MR. COCHRANE: I think we've made significant progress on almost all of them. We have an update that was circulated in your book to April 2005 and we'll do a subsequent update now once we get our new budget indication because it's going to have another series of resources, we think, for that. The vast majority have been implemented either in their entirety or are making significant progress.

For example, they had a suggestion that there be an English as a Second Language guideline for children in the school system that are getting English as a Second Language services, and that brought forward not only the guideline and a discussion about English as a Second Language, but also $350,000 in resources up to, hopefully, another additional amount this year. So a whole number of those have been done.

One of the most significant ones would be the class size guidelines, the core professional services. They were very conscious of the fact that, for example, they said the ratio for resource teachers to students should be one resource teacher for every 165 students. When we started, we were one for 200-some. So we said, okay, the interim guideline will be one to two, let's get to that ratio. We've been there. We're now at one for 193 students, and we're working towards one for 165 students. We've gone through a whole number of initiatives to try to bring those into complete response. We hear from our partners quite regularly, and we report to them as often as we can. There's no question your comment is right.

[9:15 a.m.]

It's a good group to get a reaction from, and input and recommendations from. You're always at your peril, because you never know what they're going to say, and that's fair. For example, our initiative now with regard to autism would have been something that would have been addressed by one of the groups of that 22 that had a particular interest in the autism spectrum disorder. We now have some resources assigned to that. We now have a person working at the Department of Education to coordinate the services throughout the boards for children who would have autism and need the treatment that's available.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I can appreciate that, and I know you're quite knowledgeable on many of the programs, but it didn't really answer my question. So a short answer because . . .

MR. COCHRANE: That's not like me.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): . . . I've read through documents and Hansards of different times when you appeared. Out of the 34 recommendations - you must know how many you could check off or government could check off - how many have been implemented?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, we've got 12 out of 12 so far, and we're going through. Some are partial.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Under 20 - maybe that might help.

MR. COCHRANE: No, many more than 20. If there's 34, I would suspect we're in the early 30s, and it's a question of moving forward on the last few.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): As a committee, could we get a breakdown of that from your department, to show us and indicate which ones . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, we gave you one dated April 2005, in your documentation, and as a result of the hearing today we will submit to you an update. Just let us go after the budget, if you would, and that will give us the most updated version as to what initiatives have taken place.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Things could be much different after the budget, so I'll look forward to that. One of the things, reading through the information and material provided for us, I came across - or actually, I think I looked it up - the news release from the Minister of Education at the time when they started this process. One of the quotes from the minister at the time - and I'll quote from it again - is, "We have a broadly representative committee that needs to hear from everyone with an interest in helping special needs students to thrive in Nova Scotia's schools . . ."

My question to you, deputy minister, is, do you feel that the special needs students in Nova Scotia are thriving in the school system that we have now and with the resources they have available to them?

MR. COCHRANE: I think they're being well served. Whether individual students are thriving or not, I can't tell you that the children who aren't special needs children in some cases aren't. I think our professionals are working very hard. I think the resources are being well spent and being well applied to try to provide the best service we possibly can. There are limitations, but we have very well-trained, qualified teachers, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, resource teachers, who are now tracking guidance teachers for the first time in the ratios. So I think we're making significant progress. I'd like to think that we're well on the way to having those students thriving.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): That's great. I would agree with you on the quality of our professionals who are in the system. The question is, and ultimately the answer to being able to answer this question would be, is the government providing enough resources to ensure that these special needs students are thriving, not only the regular students?

Going through the report, actually Recommendation 19 caught my interest. I spent a bit of time looking through the announcements, the programs, the money that was allocated to them, and that recommendation was to immediately inject $20 million into the 2002-03 fiscal year.

What I could find out - and I'll give you a quick breakdown, because I think maybe you can give me more information and the committee more information on actually where the money is being allocated, but from our quick breakdown and to the best of our knowledge, since 2003 - not just in the 2003 budget that we couldn't find a $20 million injection - that there has only been around $6.5 million targeted for special needs in programs like $1.1 million for assistive technology; an additional $500,000 was agreed under a deal with the unions to enhance time available for collaborative individual program planning, or IPP meetings and programs for IPP; $2.3 million for Reading Recovery; a promise of $400,000 which was cut to $200,000 for tuition agreements; and $1.4 million for special education and then $1 million for a pilot program.

When I looked through it and our staff and our research staff looked through it, we came up with a total of $6.53 million dedicated to special needs since the publication of the SEIRC Report. That's nowhere near the $20 million from Recommendation 19. So my question is, why has the government only provided one-third of the money that the SEIRC Report recommended that needed to be injected into the school system?

MR. COCHRANE: We have well exceeded the $20 million, not a doubt about that. In fact, in 2005-06 there was $15 million assigned just to cover from September to March 31^st under Learning for Life II. The tag end of that will come in this budget which is to look after the months of April, May and June. It depends on what you want to count. One of the recommendations in the report was to make sure that we had class sizes that were capped and some of those initiatives alone, we've hired, I believe it was 400 teachers with regard to the class (Interruption) A little under 400 teachers to cap Primary, Grade 1 and Grade 2, not counting what we're going to do this year for Grade 3.

The core professional services, as we said, Reading Recovery alone, we provided $2.3 million across the system. The English as a Second Language, as I mentioned, we're up to $350,000. We've added almost $1 million in the last five years to the APSEA accounts. We have a number of initiative projects and so on that are out there. The numbers associated with the targeted funding for core professional services, we added, in 2005-06, $3.9 million alone, $2 million in 2004-05, $800,000 in 2003-04. Innovation pilots were up to $2 million across the system with regard to that. We've added in the core professional services, in the first two years, 111.3 core professionals and they come at $50,000 a pop roughly depending on where they are on the wage scale when we get them.

So we've well exceeded the $20 million and if you look at how it is incrementally, in other words if you spend $1 million the first year, you spend that $1 million again in the second and third years and subsequent to that. So if you want to send your researchers to see us, we would be glad to go through a number of those initiatives. We would also like to talk about the categories that were outlined in the SEIRC Report

and a number of the initiatives in Learning for Life I and Learning for Life II that address that.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I can appreciate all those numbers being thrown at me, but the one thing that really is alarming to me, or concerning to me, is the fact that you mentioned cap sizes for classroom size, or capping classroom sizes. In my view, how does that go towards the core services needed to address special needs students? I mean, capping class sizes should be put under a column for all schools, for education, not for special needs. We're talking special needs and the lack of resources that this area in our schooling has seen over the years.

Are you saying that capping class sizes and taking that money that government has spent on that and putting that towards what the SEIRC Report indicated needed $20 million for core services, and that's where I think we may have a difference of opinion on where we put what money actually went to the core services for special needs. So are you saying that capping class sizes, that money that you have allocated for that, or government has allocated for that, goes towards what you would account to addressing special needs programs in the school system?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, Recommendation 18 in the SEIRC Report that came from the 22 groups that were interested in that particular topic, recommended that class size initiatives be brought forward in Nova Scotia. We've done that and we've done it aggressively and, quite frankly, I'm very proud of it - and I can tell you if you're teaching a Grade 1 class of 33 children and you had a special needs child, it is that much more difficult than if you were teaching a special needs child in a classroom of 25. It may not be the number we would like yet, but it does enable the teacher to spend more time on that child and the other children, and it does make a significant difference with regard to the amount of attention and the amount of time that that child will get in those classrooms. It's not just a special needs initiative, it's an initiative for every child, and to enhance the learning environment and really to dictate the class composition in that particular room.

I don't think anybody would say that it's not a significant initiative in Nova Scotia; certainly the teachers would say it's a significant initiative. But outside of those caps we have still a significant amount of dollars assigned to the core professional services, to Reading Recovery and so on, and it does create a much better climate in which instruction and learning should take place.

MR. DAVID WILSON(Sackville-Cobequid): I think that's one of the things that is so frustrating, and the problem that we see is that far too often government is diluting the figures, they're diluting the money that is supposed to be allocated for a certain program, and I guess we will have to disagree - in my version of what actually is being spent for special needs, nobody is saying class sizes and capping class sizes isn't

important, I mean, I have a young child in elementary school, and I think she is going to benefit from that, but what we're talking about is special needs and the problem seen by many of the parents who are frustrated and don't know where to turn when they try to get some additional resources for their child and government continues to say we're meeting the requirements, we're meeting the reports and the recommendations.

So we'll go on to something else right now and definitely I think our researchers will get in touch with you and your department to try to sift through what I'll call "diluted figures" from what we can find out and pull from these massive amounts of numbers.

One of the things that is very concerning to us is the fact that many of the parents who call my office, or call our MLAs in the province, when they identify a student who may be at risk, if their child is having difficulties in school and they believe there is something there, there is something that is not being recognized to assist the student to progress through the different levels and grades, one of the long waits is to be assessed - if a parent requests to be assessed or go through an assessment for their child, there is a delay there and many of them who contact my office say there's such a delay that many of them have taken it upon themselves to go out and seek third-party assessment and evaluation for their child, and my concern with that is the fact that those individuals or those families who can't afford to do that are being left behind, who might be lower on the wait lists to gain access to additional programs to hopefully assist their child.

Any comments on that? Are the children who can afford it - the parents who can afford to seek third-party assessment or evaluation of their child - are they bumping ahead of an individual or a family, in the line, who can't afford to do that?

MR. COCHRANE: Our system will triage the requests, and the wait list is an interesting concept and gets a lot of attention in health. We don't have an established criteria that is the same across the province and every board as to what puts you on the waiting list. You may have someone who says I would like another opinion or I'd like a second test, or I would like to see how they've done now, six months later, and we attempt to put those in order, so that the most significant cases are dealt with first. There is no doubt if someone goes out and buys a service, they'll get the benefit of a report that they will have, but our serious cases are dealt with by our professionals. I don't have speech-language pathologists and guidance counsellors sitting around, they're all working very quickly at the number of cases that they have.

We have some reports with regard to the number of students and so on and the services that are required, but I think the general situation is that in any system as large as ours, when you have a certain number of professionals and a number of children, and a number of expectations that vary from family to family and child to child, it's difficult to get common criteria.

We did ask Cindy Giffen-Johnson to come with us today, who is the Student Services Coordinator in the Annapolis Valley. We'll give you the broad provincial picture and I think she can speak to Annapolis and I think that's probably representative of most of the boards in the province. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask Cindy to address that question from the specifics of a particular district.

MADAM CHAIR: Time has expired. We'll have to come back to you, sorry. We will do that, we will come back. I recognize Ms. Whalen, you have until 9:53 a.m.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: Thank you. Again, welcome this morning. I think this is a subject that is of pressing interest to the province, certainly to parents, teachers, anybody who's involved at all with the school system.

[9:30 a.m.]

I have a number of questions that relate to how we're dealing with our special needs students, I think that's the area of most concern today, and what opportunities we're making available. To begin with, I'd like to talk about the preparation for parents who have a special needs child, to arrive at the doors of the school as they're preparing to enter their children in school. I believe there's not enough information made available to those parents and that the most educated parents and the most articulate and vocal parents are able to lobby and do a wonderful job accessing certain programs within HRSB or any of the other school boards, but that many other parents arrive not knowing or understanding the system. I believe it takes them time before they get into it and understand it and that we're not helping them from day one to access the full benefits available. So I wonder, could you address that for me about preparation, orientation and helping parents be the best advocates?

MR. COCHRANE: Thank you for the question. I'll refer to Ann Power, who is the director of student services for the province and I think probably in conjunction with Ann, Cindy will make some comments as well. I think they're very specific questions, they're good questions and we have about 10,000 children a year accessing the public school system.

One of the things that is going to make a significant difference is our pre-Primary course that we have in 19 locations in Nova Scotia, because they will actually be in the system a year earlier and be able to have a better sense of what that child needs as they move into Primary and Grade 1. Ann.

MS. ANN POWER: Thank you. We have the same concern, actually, in terms of parents being able to come in and get consistent information as they enter the system. There are a number of current initiatives underway to assist with that. We've just finished developing a handbook for parents specifically on the program planning process

so they can understand as they come into school, and indeed any part of their child's school career where they may need to enter into the program planning process, where their children may need specific, individualized planning. It explains how it works, what they need to do. We developed that with parents and for parents and that will be coming out very shortly - probably for implementation in the Fall.

We also developed a series of fact sheets, which are just a one-page sheet on such issues as adaptations, inclusion, enrichment and transition - transitions coming into school, between schools, leaving school. Those are very helpful to parents, they find them quick and easy to read, and there are other references on there for other more in-depth information that they need.

Transition planning. We've also done a lot of work on that. There's a provincial transition committee which involves our other partners in Community Services and in other agencies that help with the transition to school and from the workplace.

Mr. Cochrane identified the pre-Primary program. We also have a very intensive early intervention program for children with autism. Those groups of people who are working with families at the preschool then work with the school system to transition children with autism into the system so there's a smooth transition there. That has been very helpful. We also do joint professional development with our partners in the Department of Health, again in early intervention and to help with that. All those initiatives are assisting parents. We have an appeal guide for parents so they understand the special education appeal process. All these documents are available to them either through the Department of Education or at school boards.

MS. WHALEN: Excuse me, some of these are already available. You say the fact sheets are currently available?

MS. POWER: Yes, we're still developing them. It's a whole series of fact sheets and we've done four and I guess we have about three to go.

MS. WHALEN: What I'm concerned about is this great time lag. We've had an inclusion policy and the need for advocacy from parents for many years, and yet we haven't been able to properly equip them to do the work. I'm glad to see you're looking at a workbook today. I hope it's written in plain English so many of our people and parents can read it because, again, we have many parents who maybe, as well, have literacy issues and need real firm help, not very bureaucratic words.

What I find is they learn most of their information from each other, from parents advocating among each other and maybe saying what I got from my child and what can you get for your child. We have to get away from that. We have to be able to put everybody on an even footing. That's my big concern. So, right now, who's the person

or the agency that would give parents that information? Is it the principal, as they come through the door, or is there a better way to advise parents when you recognize a special need?

MS. POWER: The first person would be the teacher in the classroom, but if children are coming into school then, yes, it would be the principal or vice-principal in the school.

MS. WHALEN: Well, certainly we need to have, as you say, a consistent and uniform way of handling that. I think there has been, obviously, a gap in the system and I hope that your materials will get to work on it because we've wasted a lot of time.

On the appeal guide - I'm interested in talking a bit about the appeals. Can you explain the process and the committee that is involved in appeals?

MS. POWER: Well, basically, there is no committee that exists just as an entity in and of itself. A committee is pulled together or formed when there is an appeal around an individualized program plan or around the placement of a child within a school in relation to the individualized program plan. If a parent disagrees with that, then they can appeal at the school board level. So there is a process whereby the school board will have an appeal committee, and usually the school boards have a named committee which involves - they do it slightly differently, but there are parameters around it. They have to have an independent voice on the committee and a representative for the parent and a representative for the board.

MS. WHALEN: Yes, you've assured me now. They have independent voices, that's what I wanted to hear.

MS. POWER: Oh, yes.

MS. WHALEN: That it's a balanced committee, that's what's important. On the issue of tuition agreements which are rather new, I know they had existed before, but I don't think anybody was accessing them or able to. In the last couple of years, I believe just two years, we've had tuition agreements that are active with the per- pupil funding following a student to a special school where they get the attention they and their families believe are best. So can you tell me the appeal process for the tuition agreements if you're not accepted?

MR. COCHRANE: Let me clarify the difference between a tuition support agreement and a tuition agreement. A tuition agreement existed at one time where the school board would pay the entire bill associated with a child going to a special facility. It was interesting, when we held the money, centrally - that was a number of years ago - and the applications came forward, the board would send the application to the province

and the province would pay a certain number. Then in order to expedite the process, the money was assigned to the boards, and all of a sudden, over the next couple of years, there were none. When we recognized that, we said there's something going on here that's probably associating it too much with money and not about need. So we came up with the tuition support agreement which enables a parent, under a set of circumstances outlined in the regulations, to access an amount equivalent to the provincial contribution to the per-pupil expenditure.

We had a significant number of those which, when we started, of course, we had a number of children in the three institutions, and there are only three places in the province, which is a drawback in itself, because it's really not readily accessible across the Province of Nova Scotia, and that's a concern for us as well, and I'm sure it's a concern for parents in other parts of the province.

There is a process. If they don't get accepted, there is an independent person who does an appeal. First of all, there's a reviewer who looks at the applications and makes a recommendation outside of us, and then if someone is not happy with that, they can give 30 days' notice and actually have an appeal. We have another person who is an independent person who does that appeal, and that's Isabelle Denheyer, who is a professor at St. F.X. She operates independently, we set up the cases and so on, but then she makes a final determination on appeal.

MS. WHALEN: That helps, as well. I wanted to find out whether that individual was, again, not part of the Department of Education or school boards, so that does help in that regard. Can you tell me how many students are accessing the tuition support agreement?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: The new one. Is it about 50?

MR. COCHRANE: Oh, no, more than that. In 2004-05, we had 77 students who were approved for the payment. In 2005-06, we had 119 students who were approved. In 2006-07, so far, we've had 132 applications, 46 of which have been approved, and a number are still pending. It has been running somewhere between 77 and 119.

MS. WHALEN: Can I ask you about the two-year limit on these agreements, that the intent as it was introduced, was children, if it was agreed that they would benefit by this, were allowed to go away for two years, get established in a new school, but then there must be a plan in place to bring them back to the public school.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, correct.

MS. WHALEN: I can tell you, personally, a lot of families are very distressed as the two-year time is now coming close. Even as a year ticks by, they realize they're 50 per cent through the two-year support, and often it has been an absolute relief to have them in a school where they're beginning to thrive. I know the previous speaker had asked the very question, are they thriving in public schools? Many of these students are doing marvellously as they transition to these other special schools that are designed for learning disabilities.

So what are we doing? Are we reassessing the two-year plan? Can we extend that two years further? What is your position on that? I'm sure you're being asked by many parents.

MR. COCHRANE: The two years was established for a specific purpose. One of the things that we are asked for all the time in the public system is an inclusionary policy. We spend a lot of time and a lot of effort making sure that our special needs children are included. In fact, there are organizations that were part of that group of 22 whose motto, basically, is that students will be fully integrated into the system. So this particular program was a bit of a deviation from the school system providing an inclusionary structure for everyone.

We did recognize that from time to time special intervention may be necessary or may be beneficial, and we did look at what institutions could provide that in Nova Scotia. So, as a result, there was a recognition that for a period of time - and it's like any inclusionary aspect, we expect our students to be included, but from time to time there may be a situation where they would be better served in a homogenous environment.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you. I understand that inclusion is the basis of our policy and legislation, but at the same time, for a student to be awarded the tuition support agreement, it has been agreed by the school board that they can't meet their needs. Is that not true, that the school board says we can't do it as well as somewhere else?

MR. COCHRANE: The school board accepts the fact that there is an option to provide some service to that child in another location. If we solidly agreed we cannot meet their needs, it would be a tuition agreement, not a tuition support agreement. Those are still options that are available to even the people who have been out of the system for two years.

We have very, very well-qualified professionals in our system. Quite frankly, I'll hold our system professionals up to anybody else's out there in the private sector. I think you would expect us to make sure we put those kinds of people in place in our system. So it's a recognition that, from time to time, that child may benefit from another environment, a different situation. We picked two years because our goal is to have those children back in the public school system, to make sure that the public school system has

the resources and the professionals to meet those needs, and that we do have an inclusionary public school system.

MS. WHALEN: I'd like to go to the cost again, the expenditures that we have for special needs. You began in your remarks by saying that the Department of Education provides $66 million, but in fact the school boards are spending $120 million - which is marvellous - that the need is so great that they almost doubled the amount of money that's provided specifically for this purpose, but what are they taking that money from? We know that the school boards' budgets are tight, they don't have a lot of extra room. So what it really says to me is that they're having to take money from other programs and plans, whether it's from textbooks, or libraries, or other things that are very important, they're diverting funds in order to provide the amount of teacher aides, or EPAs, or special programming that's needed for the many students who come in.

It concerns me that we're talking about the public system having the resources, when in fact they're clearly, in terms of dedicated funding, just about 50 per cent short on the dedicated funding they need for special education, and that's probably not the full need. I just challenge you - if you would, perhaps, Mr. Cochrane - if you could explain how you can say that we have the professionals - I know the professionals we have are excellent, but we don't have enough and we don't have enough resources. My premise is that we should allow those families who have found a safe haven, in a place where their children are learning and thriving, to stay there longer.

MR. COCHRANE: I'm not surprised with your position on that, quite frankly. We have to provide some set of rules associated with this, and there was recognition that two years was a reasonable length of time. Everyone who accessed the program knew the rules - now they may not have agreed with them, but they knew what the circumstances were. We're not saying they can't stay there, all we're saying is that your funding will go back into the system. Look, I understand . . .

[9:45 a.m.]

MS. WHALEN: May I ask, is there no option to appeal or extend the two years?

MR. COCHRANE: It's a regulation; the regulation is outlined. We did some consultation on the way into this program actually with a number of groups, and I'm sure that everyone felt that two years probably wasn't enough for their own particular needs. But one of the things we don't want to do is we don't want to allow the public system not to deal with these children and provide the kind of services, or have the infrastructure in place to deal with these kind of students.

One of the things we want to do from the public school system is enable these children to become independent livers and independent students as best we can, and that is what the policy of inclusion is all about.

MS. WHALEN: I understand that, but the students who are accessing the tuition agreements are a kind of unique group within your system because they're kids with learning disabilities - and the children with physical disabilities, I would say, or handicaps, who require a lot of assistance or perhaps need assistance with toileting or things like that, they get the help they need because it's acute and also, as I have been told by parents, if you have a severe behaviourial difficulty, you get the help, but if you're learning disabled and you're well behaved and you don't disrupt the classroom, then those are the kids, the moderate kids, who are falling between the cracks. I don't think that we have the EPAs and the assistance with learning disabilities that is needed to help those in that middle ground.

I would like to hear your view on that in the last three minutes that I have.

MR. COCHRANE: I'm not sure the people in the middle ground will meet the criteria set down, because you need an individualized program plan in order to access the Tuition Support Program. If they're in that group that you just described, I would suspect that they're not going to have an individualized program planned. It was very carefully designed to make sure that we acted on behalf of the child, that there was an exit strategy from the public school system, and then made very sure that there was a re-entry program and specific supports put in place for these people and children to come back into the school system.

Now, I've heard a couple of situations where someone said to come and see us in September. That's not acceptable. We've made it very clear that the names of these children have been provided to the home boards, and the home boards are to deal with the parents in designing an individualized program plan to allow a seamless and smooth transition back into the public school system. You know we're going to have the odd glitch - it's not acceptable.

MS. WHALEN: One of the other questions I wanted to go back to is when you spoke about the Pre-Primary Program as being a great way to flag children - I think it's important that it be said here that that is an insignificant number of children right now given the total number of primary students we have, in terms of a method of capturing children with needs.

MR. COCHRANE: It's only one device. There are 19 pilots and, quite frankly, we started it on a pilot basis to make sure that it is going to work for the needs of students in Nova Scotia . . .

MS. WHALEN: But it's an optional program.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, and it may very well be, even if it extends across the province, because many parents want to have the responsibility at home for their children and, quite frankly, I don't think the government is going to impose that it be mandatory to enter school at the age of four. I don't know that yet, but when we get the assessment of the pilots there will be some determination of that, but I think there is going to be a recognition that parents do have rights, and some parents may choose to have their children at home, if that circumstance is something they are able to provide.

MS. WHALEN: There are better programs in the province. In the Hants area, the AVRSB runs a program for three-year olds, where they meet all the parents with three-year olds, the children come in - I think they call it something like a three-year-old roundup - it's an excellent idea . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Cindy can speak to that - when they do the screening of three-year olds in the Annapolis Valley.

MS. WHALEN: . . . and it has been going on for many years, as I understand, and probably a good model that would be a lot more effective if you're trying to identify those needs early and address things like autism, speech needs and so on.

MS. CINDY GIFFEN-JOHNSON: This year we're looking to also implement that in Kings and Annapolis. We're applying for a special grant with Health to be able to do that. It's an important partnership. The reason we have the three-year-old screening is because Education, Community Services, Health, all of us in that area, have agreed that that is critical, so that in combination with the work that EIIS has been doing - and also educating our local physicians and doing work with our local Valley Child Development Association is also a critical piece. Just the partnerships in developing family service plans for folks early on, and educating young moms and dads as well.

MS. WHALEN: That takes us back to the preparation for parents. Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: The time has expired. I would like to recognize Mr. DeWolfe. You have until 10:13 a.m.

MR. JAMES DEWOLFE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good morning, deputy, and good morning, staff of the Department of Education. I'm very pleased to have you here today so we can discuss some of these issues that already have been brought to the floor. In the Blueprint for Building a Better Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Government has outlined the development of a new tuition support program for students with special needs, students with IPPs. This process has been developed to provide eligible students with the opportunity to attend designated special education in private

schools related to their needs. The intention of this support, as I understand it, is to provide for students with attention deficit disorder, ADD; attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD; autism spectrum disorder, ASD; or learning disabilities, LD, for these students to access education outside the framework of the public schools.

Having said that - which is a mouthful in itself with all these acronyms - the area I'm particularly interested in, and you may recall by way of correspondence in the past, is the autism spectrum disorder, because I do have a grandchild who is now 4 years old with autism. He had been diagnosed with autism back some time ago and, fortunately, it was detected, perhaps not early enough, back about a year ago. As you know, these things are best dealt with if they are detected early. I have to say for the record that he's doing very well for the most part. People wouldn't even notice that he has autism because of the work my daughter has done, because of the dedication of my wife, who is very much involved in the program. She totally dedicated herself to the preparation of this young guy to get him ready for the school system in another year. He's doing very well, and working in the program.

So, having said that, this is an area that - special needs means a lot to me as a grandparent. The autism program that we now have in place is starting to spread out across the province and beginning to encompass more students, more children, more families. It is a family problem; it has to involve all members of the family in order for the success of this program.

I would like to find out from you and your staff - whoever is the expert on autism and this particular disorder - where we're going with it, what plans we have in the future. It's very important to me, as a grandparent, it's very important to my daughter as a parent and particularly very important to my grandson, Carson.

MR. COCHRANE: I'll ask Ann Power, who is the director of student services. We have, as I mentioned, just brought on someone from the system who is coordinating the efforts on behalf of Nova Scotia's school system.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Power.

MS. POWER: This is an area actually that we're very excited about, because we have put a lot of effort into this whole area. It involves, as you say, when you're in a family situation it involves the whole family. When the child goes to school, it really involves the whole school, particularly if children have more severe forms of autism, you have to have a very structured environment, you have to teach teachers and even, to a certain extent, reorganize the physical settings in order to help the child succeed. There are some excellent examples of schools where that has happened. Cindy could speak to a couple of schools in her area in particular that have very successfully dealt with a number of children with autism transitioning into the school system.

In terms of provincial initiatives, we have a very extensive and comprehensive professional development plan for teachers, which involves teaching around the various aspects and components of autism. I probably won't go into the details of pivotal response therapy and SERTs, and there are a whole bunch of acronyms that refer specifically to the strategies that teachers can use; however, it is something that we've been doing in concert with the Department of Health. They've put in $6 million to the early intervention services for children with autism over the last five or six years, and there are autism teams working in each area of the province.

Previous to that, it would have been very difficult to get an actual early identification or an identification of autism, because it was really only at the IWK - there was one section of the IWK that dealt with it. Now we have those services. We've trained psychologists, we've trained early interventionists, and so we're looking at it from a system-wide perspective, not just education.

MR. DEWOLFE: Can I jump in? This early intervention, is this just here in metro or is this across the province?

MS. POWER: All across the province. Every region has it. Perhaps Cindy would like to speak to that, because she can also speak to the autism support centre that many of the boards and regions are setting up for parents.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Giffen-Johnson.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: It's very exciting. For the first year we have an autism consultant on our board that we were able to access under our Learning for Life and special projects piece that is now becoming part of our permanent baseline funding for next year. Kim Hume, who is our autism consultant, is responsible for our autism centre, which we've set up at Kingston and District School, one of the schools in our board that does a very effective job in programming, helping with transition, supporting parents, working with teachers and educational assistants. Our autism centre is valuable because it doesn't just support parents of children in school, it also supports parents of children pre-school. VAST, the Valley Autism Support Team, which is a very well-organized, vocal group of parents of children with autism . . .

MR. DEWOLFE: And this is key . . .

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: It is key, absolutely.

MR. DEWOLFE: . . . to the success of these students when they get in the school system.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: Right, exactly. So we have a library that we share there. The resources that we've been able to get through the early intervention project, provides videos, materials. Parents can come in and do some of the make-and-take things that you must do to help program and set up visual schedules for children. We also, many of us - I didn't personally but Kim did and a number of the other autism consultants - worked on an autism guide for teachers, which has just come out. We have a lead team in our board - and I know other boards do as well - that is responsible for going into classrooms, observing, working with parents, helping to develop, helping to make the connection with those plans that children have before they come to school, the types of things your wife and daughter are doing with your grandson, and connecting that to the program plan that the child will have in school.

We have made huge gains in this area. And you're right, it's never enough. But we have really come a long way in the support of children with autism throughout our system. In the last 10 years, it really has been incredible, the changes that we've seen. As a former special education teacher, who taught in segregated classrooms in 1975, just the evolution and the development of this has been so exciting, and truly beneficial to all the children and to the parents.

MR. DEWOLFE: I'm not complaining for a minute, because I'm sopleased that this program is now in place. I feel sorry that it wasn't in place 10 years ago.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: It doesn't mean that we don't miss some people, because sometimes we do, but that's why we're trying to educate and make schools a welcoming place to all families of all cultures because that's an important piece of what we do, too. As a former school administrator, knowing that all families feel welcome to come into my building regardless of the challenges or the differences that may exist between our culture and the school, yes, it's critical.

MR. DEWOLFE: Well, I certainly commend the department for the work that they're doing with regard to autism across the province. I know we have support groups that come to the house every week to work with my grandson.

[10:00 a.m.]

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: You can come to our conference on May 10^th.

MR. DEWOLFE: I will make every effort to do so because this is something that I click into on the Internet on a regular basis just to find out what's happening in the world of autism, and have a special interest in. So I thank you for that, and encourage you to do more.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: We're trying.

MR. DEWOLFE: Yes, and I know that this is the plan of the future, because these young people, as I have learned on the Internet, there are doctors, there are lawyers, there are all kinds of professionals out there who have autism and lead very successful lives in our community and can be an integral part of our community. So it's very encouraging.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: If I could just say one more thing since I have the mic, and I'm a teacher. One of the things that we need you people to do, too, and all of us to do, is to work on transition for these young people, or the young people with autism into the community as they get older. As our MLAs, as people who work and help us in these partnerships, it's absolutely critical that we focus on our adolescents who are now coming in, that we have been in an inclusive system, and we work, and we work diligently - Community Services, Health, Education - to develop appropriate placements and services for our young adolescents as they leave our school system. So in that way you can help us.

MR. DEWOLFE: Yes, and it's unfortunate, I guess, like myself, as an MLA for eight and a half years, I didn't really grasp the problems associated with it until I fell into this with my grandson a couple of years ago. So it has now become very important to me, and I will certainly be on top of it. So any information that you have, I would appreciate receiving on my e-mail address at any given time because, as I said, this is very important to me and I will be very supportive of it, but it's probably unfortunate that we have to be involved as a family before we really appreciate the problem. The problem existed a long time ago and maybe I, as a legislator, could have done more to support you in the past if only I had known.

Deputy, I know there are problems associated with the costs in schools. As an MLA for a riding where much of the riding is low income, I understand the cost of school supplies. I have parents coming and sitting across the desk from me who are very concerned. It amazes me sometimes how these parents, often single moms, can sit there and smile when they're so short of income and their children are going to school. They can't afford sneakers for their school children let alone costs for school supplies, equipment, hockey is a big, big cost and very important as far as I'm concerned, any sports-related activity. I realize that's outside the curriculum. I fully realize the important thing for us to provide as a government, as the Department of Education, is to supply the basics for education. What do families do that simply can't afford these extra costs? That's one of the topics that we have here today before us for deliberation - how do we encourage these single mums who can't afford the cost of school supplies in excess of the basics? Deputy, maybe you could help me with that problem, I have a very great difficulty in talking with some of these families.

MR. COCHRANE: There is no question the costs associated with a number of activities that young adolescents or children take part in are fairly expensive in this day and age.

Our first effort was to make sure that we removed fees that would be a barrier to taking part in the public school program. The other suggestion in the policy and one of the things we made very clear - and I must say that teachers and administrators and boards have done a fairly good job of this in the past - is to make sure no student is placed in a situation where they feel awkward if there's a fee that there is a difficulty for them to cope with, and so on. I know schools make every effort to include students not only in curricular-related activities, but extracurricular ones as well.

I can remember seeing some of the notes that said when the child starts school he needs two pairs of sneakers, one for the classroom and one for the gym. We have to take into consideration people's ability to pay, and I think there's greater sensitivity to that out there in the system. I think the income support program in the province provides a bit of assistance at the beginning of school for some of these issues and so on. It is difficult and the school system is vigilant and, I think, very conscious of trying to make sure they can provide assistance if they possibly can and go to every effort to make sure the children aren't put in an awkward situation.

MR. DEWOLFE: Thank you, and before I pass to my colleague I just want to say that I thank you for the support you've given to the MLAs. I know that the department has come a long way with regard to special needs, with regard to education costs. I know you do listen to the concerns that we have as MLAs, and this department in particular has come a long way just in my time as an MLA. I thank you for that.

I'm going to pass to my colleague, Mr. Christie.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Christie. You have until 10:13.

MR. PETER CHRISTIE: Thank you, and in the brief time that I have, welcome to you.

I would like you to speak a little bit about the relationship in the lifelong learning and the relationship to class sizes between Primary and early intervention. In the department's view, are those things tied in some logical way?

MR. COCHRANE: We think they are. One of the things when we looked at recommending to government where we would put some initiatives associated with class size, we said the early years are really the most formative, and if we're going to put an initiative and 400 more teachers in the system, the place to put them was in Primary and Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Next year, 2007, will conclude that plan in Learning for Life II and at that time we'll have to reflect on should we go further up, a higher size, or should we go back and revisit Primary? Would 20 be a better number? Obviously the answer is, undoubtedly, yes.

We also put an initiative in that I think is very positive. It deals with the class composition. If you have a combined class - which we know is more difficult for some of the children, and teachers do a phenomenal job of responding to those needs - there is an extra incentive or an extra support that could be provided in those situations as well. But, basically, we said if you have these many dollars, where do you get the best return on your investment, and we felt it would really start in Primary and work its way.

MR. CHRISTIE: So, in your conclusion, they all tie together, early intervention as part of a Pre-Primary Program - I heard the lady from the Valley say that - so it does sort of tie together in your logic?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes. The thing that shouldn't be lost is the partnership that exists out there amongst government departments. Community Services and Health both play an integral part in the pre-school screening process and so on, and we work together as a partnership to make sure that children have been identified if there are issues and that we get supports in place as quickly as we possibly can.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. The time has expired for the PC caucus. We'll have a second round of 12 minutes. I recognize Dave Wilson from the NDP caucus. You have until 10:25 a.m.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you, Madam Chair. One of my colleagues asked a few questions around the tuition agreements and I know it has been a concern for probably all of the families or the parents who are involved with their student or their child receiving this agreement and the timeline of the two years. The deputy minister stated the inclusive policy is the reason behind the two-year limit on the tuition agreements. What's concerning to us, what's happening is that we're forcing these children who are receiving these tuition agreements, and hopefully receiving the services they need, back into a system that originally failed them. I mean, we identified that the current system wasn't meeting their needs and that's why we have the ability or the opportunity for some of these students to seek other resources or other avenues to get their education and hopefully make an impact on their learning development through the years.

So that brings me back to my original questions around the SEIRC Report and the recommendations there. I know you stated that you have surpassed the $20 million injection that report stated. I may not have been clear when I read the initial

recommendation, Recommendation 19, that $20 million was an immediate injection in that budget year, which did not happen. Is that correct?

MR. COCHRANE: That's correct. On that also, we couldn't, in some years, get enough professionals. I mean, we're still looking for speech-language pathologists for French immersion. We're still looking for some of the guidance people we need with Masters of Guidance to work in our system and so on. So even if someone had given us all the money at once - and we didn't get it, I recognize that and we've said, but we've incrementally put it in place, and more than that - we wouldn't have been able to get some of these people. We're still having trouble.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Oh, no, I agree with you, and I know the problems down in Acadia with their programs that they're trying to identify people to come and take. I mean, it's definitely a concern. If we did a report today, if we had another SEIRC Report, I'm sure it wouldn't be a $20 million injection. It may be a $100 million injection today. So you have to appreciate, those recommendations - and you quoted many of them with the class cap sizes. That's why my evaluation of this is that it's somewhat diluted because you mentioned some of the recommendations that you implemented. One of the important ones, I think, is that infusion, that injection of $20 million that was needed then. Of course, if we looked at it today, who knows what it would be. It could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

So one of the things in looking through some of the information that I was going through, was the Auditor General's Report, the former Auditor General's Report, on student services. He was very hard-hitting with regard to the provision and monitoring of information concerning the impact of funding for special needs education. So what steps have you taken since his report to increase the resource to the special needs unit to ensure accurate data is collected efficiently and to ensure that the funding follows the children with the special needs?

MR. COCHRANE: The Auditor General made a number of references to the gap analysis and taking a look at the money that's put in and the number of professionals who have been put in place. We do a fair amount of work with regard to tracking. As I say, we can tell you now, by every board, what the ratio is of speech-language pathologists, guidance counsellors, psychologists. We're now able to tell you how many teacher assistants per pupil there are or how many pupils per teacher assistant are now in the system. So we've been doing a lot of work on analyzing that. We did find a few boards that didn't take the action that we thought was necessary and we have had words with them.

We saw one situation where it got worse, and we couldn't believe it - we gave you money and we have less. They also had issues with regard to some of the more rural areas of the province not being able to get some of the professionals that they wanted

quickly in some of those areas. One board wasn't paying a lot of attention to the whole initiative and now they are and we're quite happy with their progress in that regard, but we do the analysis. We do follow it, we do track it, and we do a lot of targeting funding and you may hear from school boards that don't like that. I hear from them all the time, just give us money and, quite frankly, that is not going to happen. We're going to give them money to meet their needs but, at the same time, when there's a provincial program, we feel an obligation to assign targeted funds to make sure that that money is put into that program. You can't take your Reading Recovery money and spend it on something else.

So we have been doing a lot of that and we do get complaints. I'm sometimes the devil in that situation and I make no apology for it. If you're going to do a provincial program and the minister is going to stand up and say you have equality of educational opportunity across Nova Scotia, then we've got to find a way and the Auditor General is quite right in saying we should track that kind of investment.

[10:15 a.m.]

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Definitely, and I think that's an area that we need to look at and prove. It's very confusing when you're going through the information provided, especially the statistics and the charts with the students receiving services, and one of the things we couldn't really find is how many special needs students there are in the Province of Nova Scotia because I think with one of the charts, especially the one on children receiving services, it doesn't identify that one child may need two or three different services. So the numbers don't reflect the actual number of special needs students in the province. So is that something that you could give us today on how many special needs students there are in the Province of Nova Scotia today?

MR. COCHRANE: I'm glad I can't, quite frankly. We've come a long way and I'm glad that I can't do that. Many of the children are integrated in our system and they're doing very well. As the member for Pictou East commented, nobody may know that that child has that particular disability. We have multiple students who are getting one kind of service or another. Is the child who is receiving Reading Recovery, who is in the bottom 20 per cent of that Grade 1 class, a special needs child and if it is, should we say it is?

The important thing is the child is getting service and we're a long way from what they did in the 1960s and 1970s and, quite frankly, I'm quite proud that the education system has gotten away from that. There are a number of children, we could tell you how many are getting psychological services, we can tell you how many are going to get speech-language pathology, we can tell you the number of students who are getting resource help, but that may not make them a special needs child. It makes them a child

who's special, getting special services, but it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, we're going to cast any aspersions on that child and their ability to succeed and become an independent learner and an independent liver.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Your answer is quite candid and it surprises me a bit because the way I look at it, if you can't tell me how many special needs children there are in our school system, how can we ensure that we don't allow some of them to fall through the cracks? How do we ensure that we can reach them? I understand that we don't want to label children, that's the worst thing you can do, I'm not saying that. But there should be a way of identifying that there is out of - you know, we look at British Columbia, I think 15 per cent of their children they recognize as those who are in need. So if we do that conversion in Nova Scotia, there could be 20,000 children in Nova Scotia who are in that category.

MR. COCHRANE: We know the percentage of children who are accessing some kind of special service and we also know the number of children who might be on an IPP. I can tell you right now, for example, in 2004-05 there were 330 children in Annapolis Valley receiving some kind of psychological service. That may not mean they're a special needs child. It may be needed for a month, they may be going through trauma as a result of something going on at home.

If identifying them was going to dictate success, we wouldn't have had a dropout rate of 20 per cent and 30 per cent in the 1960s and 1970s because they did identify them then and they often put them right down in the basement in a special classroom. We're over that and I think that's a tribute to society, parents, people who won't put up with that anymore.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Could you provide us with those numbers?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, I think it's there, but we can give you the numbers from 2004-05 and we'll have an update on those as well. We have the number on IPP, those who are receiving speech-language services, psychological service, resource, Reading Recovery and severe learning disability services. So we've got it all. I think you have it.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Yes. There was so much so I don't know.

MR. COCHRANE: I know. Aren't you excited about it?

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I will ask you to provide it for us. I appreciate that and I understand the sensitivity around that. You had quoted earlier the number of students accessing the tuition agreements.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I think you said anywhere from 77 to 119. When I look at that number, I know that the initial promise toward tuition agreements was around $400,000, which was cut to $200,000. Is that true? Is that accurate?

MR. COCHRANE: It's $400,000 assigned to the budget, and it is being spent. What happened in the first couple of years, and it's interesting, any transition, the department paid the actual money because the students who were outside the system weren't on the registry for the board, so the board wasn't getting money from the department for that child. So we actually paid them. Now what happens, the child who goes to the program would be on the registry for the board and, therefore, they have the money, and they send it to the special facility. So it's really not a monetary issue at all because, quite frankly, we're quite prepared to pay for the per-pupil cost associated with these children.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So that number of 77 to 119, it seems, in my view, very low, for the number of students potentially who maybe need - I mean we look at maybe 20,000 children, I know they may not all need to have this special agreement, but 77 students for a population of the student number we have in the province, in my view, seems low. Do we need to increase that? Does your department need more funds to allocate it toward that program so that we can offer more students the possibility of . . .

MR. COCHRANE: It's not money, it's access. There are only three schools in Nova Scotia for 148,000 children. So if you lived in Sydney and you wanted to access, you don't have a place for your child to go. Which is also one of the reasons why we put some limitations on the program, because it's our goal to make sure that we provide this service in the public school system.

When I talked about the numbers earlier, for example, we have 760 children who we've identified who are receiving severe learning disability services in the public school system, so add that to the 119 of the 77. What you have to remember is, this is not the only place to get that service, it's a special service in a special facility, but we have thousands of professionals providing that kind of service in the school system.

MADAM CHAIR: Order, please. The time has now expired. I recognize Ms. Whalen, for the Liberal caucus. You have 12 minutes, until 10:37 a.m.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much, and I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Clare.

I would like to go to the issue of preparation for teachers and the training that is offered. I know that some of you have said that you've been in that position as a special education teacher. My experience of talking to some young graduates from education programs is that they are not well prepared for the impact of a classroom. They've studied an awful lot about education, but they're not prepared for the special needs component that they're faced with. One young teacher this year, who I know, has a Grade 6 class with five IPPs and no teacher assistant because they're each functioning with their IPPs, I guess. For a new teacher, for any teacher, one that has been in the system for years, it's a huge obligation, responsibility. I would like to ask you, what are we doing with the universities to help prepare better for the true climate of the classroom?

MR. COCHRANE: It's an excellent question, and one of the things that wasn't done, and to the member who asked the question about the SEIRC Report - there were two recommendations we haven't been able to make the significant progress on that we wanted, Recommendation 12 and Recommendation. Recommendation 24 refers to the pre-service training that our teachers are getting in the institutions that are providing teacher training. As you know, there are four and two kind of sidebar ones. Frankly, there needs to be more work done there.

We are looking at doing a review in Nova Scotia of teacher education programs. We do have a fair number of discussions amongst deputies, registrars, assistant deputies and the student services people around Atlantic Canada about the kind of support that is given in pre-training for some of these children. We recognize that it isn't necessarily giving the level of training that people then feel comfortable when they hit the ground running in a classroom in Nova Scotia or any of the other provinces.

A good question. We're looking at it. We do a lot of interaction. A lot of our professionals spend a fair amount of time in the classrooms at the Mount and Acadia and so on, and we do have a number of agreements by which our teachers are working in the universities. More work needs to be done, perhaps a longer practicum, and then we'll question greater emphasis on some of the programs that we think are important.

MS. WHALEN: Is there an option to major in special education at the education programs? Is there any way you could specialize?

MR. COCHRANE: Not in one of ours, although they can elsewhere. We don't have a specific special education program at any one of them, there are components of that, but not right now in Nova Scotia.

MS. WHALEN: So basically we haven't begun to action any changes in our education training at this point, you're just going to review it, if I understand correctly, pending?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, for example, at Acadia there's a Masters of Inclusive Education which would really be focused on special needs children and how they fit into the system. We are debating whether or not to do the review. We had some upheaval in that system as you know, the Shapiro report, the post-Shapiro report that was done in 2000, and we're now six years later. So it's probably reasonable to reflect upon that, a four-year, two- year sequential degree kind of thing that we do.

MS. WHALEN: On the other specialists that are so important in this whole provision of services for special needs - we've talked about speech pathologists, psychologists and so on - there's a critical shortage of those people and I think you've touched on it briefly with a couple of the answers. I'm wondering what is being done to address that shortage. Is the problem that we're not paying them enough money and they're leaving, that the school board can't compete with private practice, or the various school boards can't? What can we do to provide because even if you, as the deputy minister, were to provide more funds, there's a critical shortage of these professionals here in our province. What are we doing?

MR. COCHRANE: We're doing a number of things. The job fairs were a significant improvement in Nova Scotia because our boards weren't getting out until April/May and some of our students, trained teachers were leaving us in January and February. I often say when Alberta and Ontario want to discuss teacher education that I'm not really interested in talking to them because they're part of our problem not part of our solution. The job fairs have made a significant improvement. Our boards have been out aggressively seeking these people. We do have an interesting program at the Mount.

MS. WHALEN: Can I clarify?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: Does it go beyond the education graduates at the job fairs?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: Very much so?

MR. COCHRANE: Boards will encourage people to apply and they'll approach them in other programs. I think they actually went to speech-language pathology in the class and Cindy was there to make sure.

MS. WHALEN: That's fine.

MR. COCHRANE: The other one we're doing interestingly through APSEA, of which I am the chairman, we provide a bursary program at the Mount at the Masters Program for people who would come out and work with our visually impaired and hearing handicapped people and we're pretty aggressive in recruiting. One of the things that changed - and it's an interesting question - in this round of negotiations is we dropped step one of the pay scale for introductory teachers. So, right away, we raised our salary by about $2,500, or whatever the pay gap, I can't remember what the range was, so that it's a little more competitive to start teaching in Nova Scotia now than what it was before - plus 2.9 per cent across the board.

It's not really the question of pay. Sometimes it's a question of where people want to work, but we are trying to make sure that they recognize it's an attractive place to work and we also are finding a little bit of difficulty with that rural/urban. Quite frankly, metro doesn't have a lot of trouble getting people who want to work here, but Meteghan and Clare may have a little more difficulty and we're trying to make sure that we're aggressively recruiting people.

MS. WHALEN: And I understand AVRSB has a pressing need for psychologists and speech pathologists at this very moment?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, we've reached the ratio of psychologists, but it's not necessarily uniform.

MS. WHALEN: Yes, but we also have waiting lists and a tremendous need.

MR. COCHRANE: And money on its way.

MS. WHALEN: Yes, exactly. I would like to pass the time over, please, to my colleague.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Gaudet. You have until 10:37 a.m.

MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to go directly to my questions because of the limited time. I want to focus on teacher aides. I have a situation in Clare and I'll just give the deputy a very short summary. I have a 13-year-old boy in Grade 6 presently. He never had a teacher aide. According to his mom, her son has learning difficulties. It started when he started school. He's reading today at probably a Grade 2 or Grade 3 level. He's in desperate need for help. Her son, despite his frustrations, is struggling no doubt, never complains. He doesn't miss school. He wants to go to school. His mom has had many meetings over the years with her son's teachers, with the principal, with the school board members at home, with the school board staff.

I guess my first question - I'm trying to understand her level of frustrations - is, what is the process used to determine if a student is going to be assigned a teacher aide?

MR. COCHRANE: It may depend on where you are. I'll let Cindy and Ann address that. I'll talk generally across the system. Right now for every 82 students in Nova Scotia there's a teacher aide. That varies from a board that has a teacher aide for every 62 pupils, to a board that would represent perhaps Clare, depending on whether they're in CSAP, to the high, which has about one teacher assistant for every 133 pupils. So there has been a huge increase in the number of teacher assistants in the recent years with a significant decline in the population, but there is a process by which there can be an application and a discussion about that. I'll throw it to Ann first and then Cindy, if it's okay.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Power.

[10:30 a.m.]

MS. POWER: We have teacher assistant guidelines that outline the responsibilities of teacher assistants, what the scope of their duties should be, and there are obviously big differences in terms of individual needs of children in schools, but it gives a guideline to the school boards to assist them in the types of things that teacher assistants should do. One of the things that we're working on is ensuring that when teacher assistants are assigned to schools, schools assign them accordingly. It shouldn't be based on just an individual student is assigned a teacher assistant for that individual student's needs.

These are assistants to the teacher who help teachers across the school in meeting the needs of a variety of children in their classes. This is really important because we don't want children to become dependent on someone constantly sitting by them. Sometimes you can call that sort of the velcro effect, where a teacher assistant ends up really doing a lot of the work for children. One of the things we're looking at with the student services coordinators across the province is can we ensure that in our individualized program planning that that whole aspect, functioning, moving toward independence, is a very important part of that.

We've also included it in a provincial report card for individualized program plans. I think we're probably the only province in Canada that has this at the current time across the province. This report card is a standardized report card for parents whose children have individualized program plans that we will be implementing over the next couple of years. In that, you'll see a notation about how the child is progressing. Are they currently doing outcomes with lots of assistance? Are they moving towards independence in achieving those outcomes? So it's very important for us to do that. Maybe Cindy can

give you an idea of what the actual process for signing in a board is so that you can see how that . . .

MR. GAUDET: Okay, very quickly.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Giffen-Johnson.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: It's a huge challenge. We're doing it right now for next year. We generally look at - in our board we are just trying to decide how we provide some type of equity in service or ensure that the students with the highest needs are being addressed first so that they can simply be in school. We developed a series of guidelines with our classroom teachers, resource teachers, principals and parents, as a committee, to look at how we would actually go about allocating EAs, educational assistants in our system, as we refer to them in our board.

In the end, after much debate, we looked at, all right, our top category, if you want to use categories, category A student would be that student who has extreme health needs or developmental needs, cannot be at the school at all without direct supervision for health and other diagnosed developmental needs like severe autism, not necessarily somewhere just on the autism spectrum, but a severe developmental challenge. Then we looked at the next category which we knew, as school administrators and as teachers and principals, that took so much time, the children with severe, challenging behaviours. In other words, we had to find ways of supporting children with challenging behaviours and supporting the teachers so that children could be on programs that would keep them in school, because we really don't have a lot of alternatives. We want them in school. They need to be there . . .

MADAM CHAIR: Order, please.

MR. GAUDET: I'll follow up after.

MADAM CHAIR: Time has expired. Yes, perhaps you could do that afterwards. I'm sorry. The time has expired for that round of questioning with the Liberal caucus.

Mr. Christie. You have 12 minutes, until 10:49 a.m.

MR. CHRISTIE: Thank you. Deputy, I'd like to come back to something you mentioned in your opening comments regarding English as a Second Language. Did I take it from your comments you would consider that to be a special needs classification? Did you sort of lump those together, did I interpret that?

MR. COCHRANE: It was one of the recommendations under the SEIRC Report. The Special Education Implementation Review Committee made a reference to English as a Second Language. It is a special service and I guess if you came to Canada and were in the classroom and didn't speak the language of instruction, you would have a special need, there's no question. It's in that report, but it's a separate category that we've taken initiatives on.

MR. CHRISTIE: You did mention in your comments something about some classifications - there was the international student and so on. Is it distinguished here whether they're international students or whether the person is a Canadian citizen or not? Is that a classification that you need to determine?

MR. COCHRANE: No. It's interesting, it's only a debate between the boards and myself because they'll say we have this many children receiving English as a Second Language, but I'll say, yes, but you're getting $5,000 apiece for 26 of them. I don't want to pay twice; they get up early in the morning trying to make a discussion with me. So we tried to separate those who were truly English as a Second Language students, who came as a result of being immigrants into Canada, and those who we brought in on an international student program, that we love to have them here and they add to the vibrance of our schools, but they are getting the money under that category for them. We've been able to separate it.

MR. CHRISTIE: Would somebody in the school board getting money for English as a Second Language also be getting the pupil funding?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. CHRISTIE: This is on top of?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, that's right.

MR. CHRISTIE: As you define special needs, there's the pupil cost and then there's the on top of?

MR. COCHRANE: Correct.

MR. CHRISTIE: And that's what we've been talking about.

MR. COCHRANE: That's right.

MR. CHRISTIE: Okay. Let me come back to what I ran out of time with before in terms of talking about identification. Everybody this morning has mentioned about the need for early intervention. I'd like to ask Ms. Giffen-Johnson, in terms of your board,

have the programs in terms of Primary capping and moving into the pre-Primary, do you people view that as something as advantageous to early intervention? Are you implementing those and are you starting to get some early intervention results?

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: That's a big question. Because we're in the process of collecting the data, we need to know if the intervention has been effective - that's an important part of what we do in student services. When we identify children who have special needs, who pre-register and we identify through the screening process, when those children come to our Primary classrooms and we develop a program planned for them, the importance of such things as the report card to measure whether or not they have made significant gains as a result of having the extra support or the lower class size would be significant.

We're just starting that type of process because the report card is just being piloted, but we know there's evidence to support that someone to help with or lower class sizes certainly make a significant difference for children with special needs in terms of being able to have more direct instruction.

I don't know if that clearly answers the question because there's a big answer to that too.

MR. CHRISTIE: I take from your answer there is a lot of evaluation and then accounting to different groups. I presume in the logic here that the group that did the original report will get this data and then come back and evaluate and say, we were right on this and wrong on that and we should change that.

MS. GIFFEN-JOHNSON: Ann just reminded me that we know that we have the data - and we do - to measure the intervention with Reading Recovery, which has been an important part for us and student services in all boards. We can measure the children in the lowest 20 per cent of our Grade 1 classes, so we do have all the statistics on that to show the intervention's effective and if those children are not discontinued, they need continued support through our Student Services Department. So we do have that data, yes.

MR. CHRISTIE: Perhaps I would like to then just come back to the deputy, and one of the comments the deputy made in his opening remarks was regarding universal programs and I guess you mentioned that a number of boards perhaps hadn't gotten fully into the swing of things, but they were getting there. Do we have a sense of comfort that we're going to be there across the province, that these programs will be universal?

MR. COCHRANE: I certainly do, and in our discussion one of the interesting innovations that we brought forward - and we just had it on Thursday and Friday - for the second time we brought all the principals in to meet with the boards and the department,

and a discussion, and it's interesting as we talked to them about the differences they're beginning to feel, and you can get some sense of maybe it's not being adopted as quickly in some areas as we might like, but I'm very comfortable that the boards are sincere now and have been in their efforts to put provincial initiatives across the province. We all have our limitations with regard to geography and getting some of the core professionals that we need and so on, but I really do, member, believe that they are well on the way to recognizing that there is a provincial program out there that we're really pushing very hard.

MR. CHRISTIE: All right, so that's progressing. I just want to pick up on some comments you had with the member for Halifax Clayton Park regarding tuition fees. There have been some issues around the application date?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. CHRISTIE: Has there been any thought about that or has that changed recently?

MR. COCHRANE: We moved it. Originally it was January 31^st and now it's March 1^st. So we didn't recognize that there was some reaction to that. One of the reasons why it's quite early is that we want to make sure the proper planning takes place for the student to leave the system and everything is in place, and we know that where they're going is going to provide the service that they allege they're going to provide. So we did recognize that there was some difficulty there and we did move it from January 31^st to March 1^st.

MR. CHRISTIE: I presume that has had some success that the applicants wanted and, as you were talking about the appeal process, I presume some of the appeals you had were regarding the date, and so it's shifted now to try to meet some other regulations.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. CHRISTIE: I guess one of the other things that keeps coming up is as you're looking at special needs and you're looking at these early interventions, are you doing anything now in school design that is going to help in the special-needs category? Are you doing different things in the planning or the design that would recognize that? - let me put it that way.

MR. COCHRANE: Well, there are a number. Obviously, we design schools now with elevators - we never used to. We do modifications of schools with regard to, if there's a special-needs child who's going to need access to an elevator and we know they're coming, we'll try to get things in place. The design work also deals with a

handicap washroom, the wider access, and the rails and so on that may come along with that.

In some schools we're designing time-out rooms. I was in an existing school with a snoezelen room, and if you ever get a chance to go to one, you should - I need one right beside my office - but it's amazing some of the modifications that have been made with regard to access for students to those kinds of facilities. We also make sure that the hallways, the accesses, the ramps and so on that are needed in our system are there; we have a number of special-needs buses that transport the children - so a number of things. A number of boards do what we call barrier-free reporting each year and they put in order of priority some of the upgrades that they're going to need in order to meet the needs of special-needs children.

MR. CHRISTIE: As you're talking about designing schools, I know you've mentioned the number of children who are coming in each year. As you look out in the next few years, is it the department's view that we will see less children coming into the schools or more children and, if we're seeing less, will there be a need for more special needs? Do you see the requirement for special needs increasing in this province over the years?

MR. COCHRANE: It's interesting, I think because of the early identification and a number of societal issues that manifest themselves in the school system - we never had fetal alcohol syndrome in children 20 years ago, but now unfortunately . . .

MS. POWER: We didn't know.

MR. COCHRANE: We didn't know, that's right, they weren't identified, but we do now and we provide intervention. Our school population is dropping about 2,200 children a year. If you look at the graduation class in Nova Scotia, it has been pretty consistent in the last number of years, 12,000, 12,500. Now we're seeing our Primary class coming in at 9,000, 9,500, 10,000, and as you extrapolate them through the system, you're going to see a significant reduction.

One of the interesting things, one of the reasons for the pre-Primary program that was enabling us to do it, is we have room in many schools. Eventually if we do pre-Primary across the province, then there will be another 10,000 children so it will offset the decline.

The other thing that we really have to work on - and part of your question with regard to special needs - in our other children is, we have to keep them. It's not acceptable to drop out of high school in Grade 9 or Grade 10, it's not acceptable for a special-needs child not to be successful in being integrated into the school system.

There's no one more excited than any of these people, when you see a special-needs child go across the stage and receive their diploma with their graduating class.

I think there will be fewer children coming, but I think we're doing a better job of identifying them, serving them and keeping them.

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. CHRISTIE: As you start out, we've talked about the SEIRC Report, the Learning for Life report, what is the department's vision now going into the future? As you've taken the report back, do you see Learning for Life III coming along at some point in time with evaluating all of these things and bringing people together - is that sort of the broad view you have?

MR. COCHRANE: We do. I don't know that the Deputy Minister of Finance has the same goal that I do, but we'll beat her. Just kidding, she's out there somewhere.

We do know we need more initiatives. The government recognized Learning for Life I and II. We're starting to talk a little bit about III. We want to involve the boards, perhaps, more in III. Some of the things we have to revisit, for example, we've done the class size initiative P-3 in September 2006, Grade 4 in September 2007 - what's Learning for Life III's look on class size? Is it Grades 5, 6, 7, 8 at 27 or do we go back to Primary and start at 20?

The other great program we have, and I'm really excited about, when we did the testing in Grade 6, we provided resources behind the children so the children who weren't successful in the Grade 6 literacy exam, we provided $1 million in the first year for those children in Grade 6, $900,000 when they got to Grades 7 and 8 and this year more - I can't tell you - well, I can, but I shouldn't. We have a projected number for this year.

When we get the Grades 7, 8 and 9 intervention strategy to recognize the children who came from Grade 6 that weren't successful in the literacy test, we should now go back at the end of the third year and reflect on that. That money would buy 56 teachers, so are our strategy and our best practices working or should we go back and say, we need a class size initiative in junior high, we need more resource teachers, whatever. We're constantly evaluating what we're doing.

One of the things I should have referred to earlier - we are looking at a student information system. It's expensive. It's about $10 million to develop it, but that will give us all the information on tracking our specialists, tracking our behavioural issues, all these things; probably tracking the special-needs children by category - in other words, who's getting psychological services, a much more efficient way than we're doing it

now. It's going to have a significant difference, plus it's going to have an impact upon the reporting system and how we report.

We're constantly looking at what we're doing. There are great innovations going on right here in Nova Scotia, but we're not above plundering or stealing from our neighbours or anybody else that has good educational theory that will benefit our kids.

MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has now expired for the questioning rounds. I would like to thank the witnesses and offer an opportunity for a closing statement to the deputy.

MR. COCHRANE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I was saying to the senior executive director of public schools and we were saying as we were getting ready for coming today, we really feel quite good about some of the things that are happening. There's always more needed, there's no question - I think probably five years ago I was on a hotter seat than I am today - but I do think everyone sees a number of things that are happening that are right. That doesn't mean we have won the battle. That doesn't mean that there aren't children who aren't getting the level of service their parents might want or we might want them to have.

I don't want to diminish in anything that I might have said, or anyone who says about the policy, the need the parents have to advocate for their children. If some parent says, we want three years, we don't want two, I understand the need for that, for them to advocate for their children. What we have to do is try to find a way to advocate for all the 145,000 children in the system and our teachers and our professionals like Cindy, Ann and Mike - everyone out there working does an excellent job of that.

Sometimes I get a little excited about what we do. Sometimes I get a little bit defensive about what we do. At the same time, we can't allow myths associated with special needs to continue. It is an inclusionary system and these are members of our society and we're going to need every one of them to play their rightful role in Nova Scotia in the future.

So if we get a little excited or a little bit defensive about some things, that doesn't mean we can't listen and that doesn't mean we can't do it better. I appreciated the comments of the member for Pictou that we do try to respond and we do try to listen. We get a lot of good ideas from people. No one, because they work at the Department of Education, has a monopoly on all good ideas. One of the abilities that we like to think we have is to go out and get ideas and work them on behalf of our students. So, look, I do appreciate it.

When we mentioned the $66 million for special-needs money, about $120 million is being spent on the per-pupil expenditure, and boards find a way, thankfully, to

manoeuvre that money. The formula allows some boards to have some latitude. The interesting thing is almost every board is going to finish fiscal March 31, 2005, in surplus. They're managing the resources well. I think there are more resources than ever. I want them to spend every cent they get, because it's designed and raised by the taxpayer to put into the system and it should be spent.

So I want to thank the members of the committee. It does profile what we're doing, but it also draws attention to the needs that we have in our school system for our special- needs children and all the children in Nova Scotia. We do very much appreciate the opportunity to be here and do very much appreciate the efforts of the members to keep themselves current on the issues.

We want to thank the Auditor General and his staff because they enable us to track what we do and show when we're not doing it right. I like to think that we're educable as well. We can change programs, we can change accounting systems, and I think the thing we have to change more than anything is our attitude towards education and the fact that it's high on the list of Nova Scotia's priorities. Thank you.

I want to thank everyone who is here with me today. Darrell didn't have to say anything, that's interesting, the money man doesn't have to speak. So that must tell you we're getting enough and we're spending it right. Cindy, coming in from the Annapolis Valley, we thought it was important to have someone out there in the field who's doing the kind of work and can attest to what's going on. She wasn't prompted, she wasn't programmed, but she is appreciated. Ann Power and her staff do an excellent job in a very difficult area and a very emotional area. Certainly, Mike Sweeney, Senior Executive Director of Public Schools, does a phenomenal job. We've got a good team, we've got good clients, and I think we have a very worthwhile objective, which is to get the highest level of education we possibly can for every Nova Scotian. Thank you, Madam Chair.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. I want to just briefly report that the subcommittee has met. We received subpoenaed documents from the Nova Scotia Farm Loan Board concerning S & J Potato Farms. We were pleased with the documents that were provided by the board. The subpoena was complied with. We reviewed the documents. We at this time will retain them in confidence. They did not relate to the matter that the Public Accounts Committee had been investigating. Any member of the committee who would like to look at those documents is free to do so. They are in the Clerk's Office, and I think each of the caucuses have retained their copies.

The Office of Economic Development was also subpoenaed after our last committee meeting for additional documentation concerning the Industrial Expansion Fund and the appropriation of the additional $50 million. They have not complied with the committee's subpoena in the view of Legislative Counsel and of members of the subcommittee, or some members of the subcommittee, and we await the legal opinion

from Legislative Counsel, which will be forthcoming sometime in the next week before our next meeting. So I just wanted to make that report on behalf of the subcommittee.

The committee now stands adjourned. Thank you. (Interruption) Oh, sorry.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: Before we adjourn, we have Community Services on for next week. I wonder if we could reschedule and have the Industrial Expansion Fund in next week instead, rather than Community Services. Can we shift them around? (Interruption)

MADAM CHAIR: Let's hear from the clerk. She tells me they're not available.

MR. DEWOLFE: I understand the committee has been adjourned.

MS. MORA STEVENS (Legislative Committee Clerk): In trying to book the Office of Economic Development, they were unavailable on May 3^rd. Their next available date was May 10^th. I did check with them, because I booked them mid-May. I can call again, but they are out of town - I do believe it's a deputy minister's meeting.

MADAM CHAIR: I think that we have actually adjourned. This item wasn't on the agenda. I would have appreciated knowing that you were going to bring it forward. It makes it difficult at the end, and I think we will have to stick with it. Thank you.

The committee is adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 10:54 a.m. ]