Parents hope to save special ed school

Merle Levine

TORONTO — Parents who have children enrolled at the Merle Levine Academy (MLA), a private school for students with learning difficulties, are scrambling to try to save the school from shutting its doors next September because of low enrolment.

On April 16, Elana Lavine, the mother of a Grade 1 student at MLA, received an emailed letter from school director Merle Langbord Levine that said, “School enrolment is less than anticipated, and as a result, it is simply not feasible to carry on.”

Speaking to The CJN, Lavine said she hopes the parents will manage to raise the funds required to keep the school running despite the low enrolment.

“I hope this isn’t a swan song… My son’s class and his teacher are still a unit and they just need a home,” she said.

Levine, who has worked in education since 1959, said the special education school she created in 1974 was the first of its kind in Canada. The current location, located in a building on Dufferin Street, is a 7,000-square-foot facility that accommodates children from grades 1 to 12 with autism, Asperger’s syndrome and learning disabilities.

Before opening MLA, Levine taught at two Jewish day schools, United Synagogue Day School (now Robbins Hebrew Academy) and Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto.

She said her program was very much in demand for decades, but over the years, enrolment declined.

“Until… two years ago, we generally had between 40 and 50 students. Prior to that, it was between 60 and 80,” she said.

“There are so many little schools, and even the schools that only teach one or two subjects or summer school, they’ve really cut into this business.”

She said that while the student body at this location peaked at about 80 students, next year fewer than 20 have committed to enrolling.

“There is a very, very small student to pupil ratio. Even for four children, I have to have some kind of assistant,” Levine said, adding that tuition ranges from $27,500, up to $29,500 a year.

In the days that followed the announcement of the closure, a meeting between parents and academy staff was held at the school to discuss their options moving forward.

“Parents are very anxious to have the school continue,” Levine said.

“There are so many parents who are on board and are willing to do some thinking about it and determine whether we, ourselves, can open with fewer kids. Can we open with 13 kids? What are our costs going to be? So essentially, we’re crunching numbers for the 29th time.”

She estimated that they would need to raise about $150,000 to keep the school open for one more year.

Lavine, whose son is the youngest student in the school and about to complete a successful first year at MLA, said finding a replacement school for next year would be a major challenge.

“A class of four is a very hard thing to find. It’s an expensive model to sustain, and a lot of private schools that cater to some learning differences have mitigated those costs by making the group larger. And if your child is too ‘needy,’ then you have to pay for one-to-one support on top of tuition, which can make the cost of a year of primary school more than the cost of an American MBA,” Lavine said.

She said before she and her husband learned about the academy, the process of exploring school options for their son wasn’t easy.

“We were either discouraged or outright turned away by several private special needs schools who suggested that our child would be too needy for what they could offer, which was an eye-opening experience for us, because we thought that if we could pull together our resources to pay for a special needs education, then something appropriate would be available,” she said.

Lavine said she hopes that the parents and staff will be able to find a way to keep the school’s doors open.

“Because of the small class size and the number of teachers that are required to deliver the education to this group, we realize we have a very large financial hurdle ahead of us.”