TORONTO — Dayna Blustein, a 14-year-old Grade 8 student, became deaf at age four after contracting meningitis.
From left, Max Greenberg, Ira Walfish, Dayna Blustein and Allan Kaufman, seen at a press conference last week at Queen’s Park, defend the rights of parochial school students with disabilities to receive government-funded services. [Frances Kraft photo]
When she attended United Synagogue Day School from Grade 1 to Grade 5, her parents had to pay for services such as an itinerant teacher to help her, and for amenities such as carpeting in classrooms to absorb extraneous sounds like footsteps. Blustein, who has a cochlear implant, now attends a public school, where those costs are taken care of by the provincial government.
Max Greenberg, 13, has a learning disability. The Associated Hebrew Schools Grade 7 student said he needs more time than his peers to write and to process information that he reads.
“I really don’t think it’s fair that in the province of Ontario, they don’t pay for my disability,” Blustein said at a press conference last week at Queen’s Park.
The teenagers’ families are among a group of eight families – seven Jewish and one Muslim – who are suing the Ontario government for not funding services for children who are blind, deaf or learning disabled and who attend non-Catholic faith-based schools. The lawsuit asserts that the government is violating the children’s rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The same services are funded for students in Ontario’s public and Catholic schools.
The lawsuit was filed in 2007, and the case will be heard in Ontario Divisional Court in Toronto on May 27 and 28.
Ira Walfish, chair of the Multi-Faith Coalition for Equal Funding of Faith-Based Schools, said it’s up to faith-based schools to provide all the resources for students who are deaf, blind or have a learning disability.
He said the government’s policy of providing those resources to students in public schools is arbitrary and discriminatory. “This court action is a last resort,” he added.
Allan Kaufman, a lawyer for the eight families, said that children with certain types of disabilities – even those who attend faith-based, non-Catholic schools – qualify for government funding for seven types of services.
The funded services – speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, nursing services, dietetic services, training of school personnel to provide the services, and the provision of medical supplies for therapy – are considered health matters by the government and have been funded by the Ministry of Health since 2000.
However, resources for students who are blind, deaf or have learning disabilities are funded by the Ministry of Education.
Kaufman said the Health Ministry sets aside $14.4 million annually to be shared among all students in faith-based schools for health-related disabilities, but it only spends about $4.5 million of that amount.
He believes the remaining $10 million would cover the cost of resources for students in faith-based schools who are affected by deafness, blindness and learning disabilities and can’t access funding for necessary services from the Education Ministry.
Kaufman blames David Caplan, Ontario’s health minister, for the situation. “His ministry of health controls the $14.4 million, which could be easily spread among the disabled children.”
Walfish noted that children don’t choose to be disabled, nor do they choose to grow up in a particular religion. “There is an element of responsibility on the government’s part when it provides a program and does so in a discriminatory way. Government programs, like everything else, are subject to discrimination laws.”
According to Kaufman, this case differs from one launched by parents of children with autism because, in this case, “the money is already there” and the therapies in question “are well-known, not experimental, and scientifically proven to be effective.”