Our heart is there, but ...

The acceptance of a wheelchair-bound student by Merl Grove High School last week has calmed tempers among administrators and staff at the Hydel Group of Schools in St Andrew, who last Thursday described the child’s loving, hard-working persona, and the valiant efforts by her classmates to always ensure she was comfortable.

There was a public outcry last week after a concerned person close to the child took to social media alleging that administrators at the high school had denied the girl access because she was wheelchair-bound. The child had been placed at the St Andrew-based girls’ school after sitting the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations.

Since then, Merl Grove High has said it is accepting the student, and the Ministry of Education has committed $2 million to retrofit the institution to accommodate the child. The school denied that the child was being turned away.

Last week, however, school administrators said such a piecemeal approach is unsustainable and belittles the true intent of Jamaica’s Disabilities Act, which was enacted last February.

“It needs so much more,” stressed Margaret Campbell, principal of St George’s College in Kingston, which over the years has catered to disabled students, at least one in a wheelchair, and some with learning disabilities that require special attention.

“For the one in the wheelchair, we did the best that we could to build ramps, we moved classes downstairs as best as possible, and the boys are very compassionate so they rally around because of the culture that we set.

“We do have the ramps, but they are not very many,” she said, adding that the erection of costly barriers is also a consideration.

Campbell could not give a budget for such retrofitting over the years, but noted that public high schools like St George’s must shoulder the brunt of these costs.

“We are not funded for that, and it is very expensive to retrofit your building so that you have ramps to assist students in wheelchairs. Our heart is there. We want to accommodate all students, but there are arrangements that need to be made in order to properly accommodate them well,” Campbell told The Sunday Gleaner.

“We don’t want to take students in and then have to be doing a hodgepodge thing,” she noted, adding that some situations may need ramps that can take wheelchair-bound students up multiple floors and retrofitted bathrooms to accommodate wheelchairs.

“We talk about differentiated learning, but we need to put support behind it if that is what we really want to do,” she stressed.

Kevin Facey, principal of Meadowbrook High School in St Andrew, said the means stifle the genuine will of administrators to cater to students with disabilities, many with a variety of challenges, from physical to learning and behavioural. Currently, the school has no wheelchair-bound students, but it has facilitated blind students in the past, he shared.

“Some kids who have these challenges can be accommodated; some children will never be. It is not that we are unwilling to, but there is a way in which the need [has to be met] sometimes, be it personnel, adjustment to the physical plant, and also systems to ensure that they are able to thrive and not just survive,” he posited.

“So you really have to take it case by case, and I think my school and several others have to do the same. You would want to enable all students to thrive and, regrettably, for some persons with challenges, it is not so easy to quickly put in all that is needed for them to thrive,” he continued, adding that the majority of the school was constructed between 1958 and 1994, and so wheelchair accommodation was not necessarily a part of the process.

“The majority of that must be funded by the school. The Government does give us maintenance money and some other disbursements, but those are specifically for general repairs. So we would need additional funding,” said Facey.

Following a tour of Merl Grove by education ministry officials, Acting Chief Education Officer Dr Kasan Troupe said ramps will have to be installed at several points to facilitate the student. Short-term fixes will include the retrofitting of bathrooms and laboratories, but over the long term, the erection of a lift to make access to multistorey buildings easier is among the considerations, she said.

“We actually offered to assign a shadow to her, but her mother indicated that she is not in need of a shadow; she has been trained to be independent. She is very secure in herself and confident. She is not intellectually challenged in any way,” Troupe said.

That description was no surprise to staff members at the Hydel Group of Schools last Thursday. There, they recalled a happy, hard-working student, backed by a supportive mother who always expressed a desire for her daughter to attend a traditional high school.

Toni Austin, principal of Hydel Preparatory School, said she is happy with the ministry’s swift response to the situation.

“It is a shame that it had to take action such as this just to bring light to a situation that should have been considered before. This student is a beautiful student, such a sweetheart, a ray of sunshine. To know that she studied so hard and she got placed at that school and only for this to happen,” related Austin.

“To know that she will face so many obstacles in life just because of her specialty and to know that something like this has happened may have put a damper on her,” she said.

Austin explained that ramps were built at Hydel Preparatory to facilitate the student’s movement and that an entire grade six classroom was moved downstairs to aid her transition.

One teacher, who taught the child in grades five and six, described the girl as hard-working, independent and one who would sometimes decline help from her eager classmates to do simple tasks.

The teacher said the child’s mother was her main support and that the parent would always press her to ensure the child was placed at a school of her choice.

“PEP is hard work, and for a child to get placed at a traditional high school, they must have been preparing very hard. For me, I think PEP is harder than the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT),” said the teacher Thursday, referring to the previous iteration of the high-school placement exam.

The allegation that the student was facing a hurdle to enter Merl Grove weighed heavily on the teacher’s mind.

“This really came as a shocker for me. All morning it has been on my mind. This child is exceptional,” she said, recounting how the wheelchair-bound student led a march during a recent graduation celebration.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com