A Hamilton family is speaking out about their son’s death last month and say the seven-year-old being sent home from school early played a role in it.
Max Simao was hit and killed by a city bus just after 1 p.m. on Dec. 11.
His parents, Chris and Emily Simao, were part of a news conference at Queen’s Park on Wednesday and Chris Simao explained Max had autism and was on a modified schedule at the school. That means Max had been attending school in the mornings only, because the school didn’t have a staff member to work with Max in the afternoons.
Max’s mom had picked him up from school on that Thursday and they were headed home when Max was hit by the bus in the area of Emerald Street N. and Wilson Street.
Hamilton police have said the actions of the bus driver and child’s caregiver didn’t contribute to his death.
“Our son right now should be learning and playing in school and being supported at school. If he had been, we believe he would still be here today,” Chris Simao told the news conference as his wife, Emily, stood by his side and held a photo of Max.
“We feel robbed and cheated out of a future with Max. We are so heartbroken and mad. He should still be here with us,” he added.
“We’ve come to learn that exclusions like this are very common across the province and are a direct result of chronic underfunding that tends to affect students with special needs the most. So on a Thursday, in the middle of the day, Max was not where he had a right to be.”
Family told modified schedule was ‘temporary’
The Simaos joined the Ontario Autism Coalition and Ontario NDP at the news conference to call on the province to address the issue of school exclusions and modified schedules.
He said Max being on a modified schedule for school was not the family’s choice.
“At the end of October, we were told by Max’s school that due to staffing challenges, the school was proposing a modified schedule that would have Max attending school in the mornings,” he said.
“We were told this would only be a temporary, modified schedule just for a few weeks. These weeks stretched into a month and a half and despite us repeatedly asking when Max would return to full day school, we were told it was being sorted out.”
Kate Dudley-Logue, vice-president of the coalition, said in an interview with Craig Norris, host of CBC Kitchener-Waterloo’s The Morning Edition, that the issue of students with autism and other special needs being sent home from school or excluded is a growing issue in the province.
“We’re seeing these more and more, they’re becoming really normalized,” Dudley-Logue said in the interview Thursday morning.
The Morning Edition – K-W8:36Advocates call on province to fund better autism supports in schools
A seven-year-old boy died last month after being hit by a city bus in Hamilton. His parents say he should have been in school but he had autism and was on a modified schedule because staff couldn’t accommodate him. Kate Dudley-Logue, VP of the Ontario Autism Coalition, explains what they are asking of the province.
She said work done by the coalition to collect data on how many students are impacted shows about one-third of families of students with disabilities have reported experiencing “some kind of exclusion” either as a modified schedule or a mid-day call to come get their child due to staffing challenges.
“There are families who experience this multiple times a week,” Dudley-Logue said. “It could also look like their kid is being excluded from recess or field trips and that kind of thing.”
She said there are approximately 350,000 students with disabilities attending Ontario schools, meaning just under 120,000 students are believed to have experienced an exclusion at some point.
She said it puts families “in very precarious situations.”
“How do you maintain employment if you’re constantly having to pick your child up and have them at home when they have a right to be at school every day?” Dudley-Logue said.
School board aims to keep students in school all day
Jamie Nunn, associate director of learning services and school improvement for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board said in statement to CBC News that their thoughts are with the family after the “unimaginable loss of Max” but said they could not comment on the specific circumstances around why he had a modified schedule.
Nunn said the board is committed to supporting all students “through collaborative, individualized planning involving families, schools, centralized board services, and, where appropriate, external service providers” and their goal is that “every student is in school for the full instructional day.”
“In some circumstances, a student’s program or schedule may look different and reflects the unique needs of the child and/or family,” Nunn said.
Nunn said in “rare circumstances” a modified schedule may be required to support a student and when that’s the case, “a modified schedule is part of a holistic plan, designed in collaboration with families, to support the child’s overall well-being and learning.”
“Exclusions are rare and occur only after all other options have been explored,” Nunn said.
‘This was preventable,’ NDP leader says
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, however, said exclusions from school “are not new and they aren’t uncommon.”
“We need to do something about the unfairness that students with special needs face due to the lack of proper investment in our schools,” Stiles told the news conference.
“What happened to Max didn’t happen in isolation. It was a consequence — a consequence of not having enough support in our classrooms. This was preventable. This should never have happened.”
Premier Doug Ford was asked about the call for more funding for educational assistants at a separate news conference on Wednesday.
He said the province has plans to hire 6,000 educators, including teachers and educational assistants, and he said his government has increased funding to autism programs by $700 million since taking office.
Dudley-Logue said she felt Ford was confused by the question because the $700 million is funding for the Ontario Autism Program “which is a completely different issue.”
As for hiring thousands of educational assistants [EAs], she wasn’t sure how that would work.
“I find that kind of hard to believe because there’s probably not a pool of that many EA’s even in this province, but of course that would be welcomed,” she said.
She noted there are almost 5,000 schools in the province, so hiring 6,000 staff members would give each school a little over one extra staff member.
“It’s not really going to be moving the needle too much on individual schools who probably need quadruple that amount more EAs to really even be safely supporting the amount of students with complex needs of these schools,” Dudley-Logue said.
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario posted on X, formerly Twitter, following the news conference saying they supported the call for funding for special education “that is more accessible and allows for more flexibility to meet the wide range of needs of all children throughout the school year.”
A spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra said the government has provided $3.85 billion in special education funding, which is an increase of $1.01 billion or 36 per cent since 2017-18.
‘It must never happen again,’ dad says
Chris Simao said Max loved school and smiled when he explained that out of their four children, he and his wife Emily had to get Max ready last because otherwise he would “literally push you out the door once he was ready.”
He said the family doesn’t blame the school or the school board for not having the supports, but he said what happened to their son needs to be a wake-up call to the province to better support educational assistants so all students can attend class all day.
“We cannot bring Max back, but we could speak his name and tell his story and demand that every child with disabilities are no longer excluded, sidelined or sent home,” Chris Simao said.
“This should never have happened and it must never happen again.”
