Schools must not discriminate against students with disabilities during strike. Inclusion Alberta

Schools must not discriminate against students with disabilities during strike

January 14, 2025

For Immediate Release – January 14, 2025 

The ongoing school support worker strike in Edmonton, Sturgeon County and Fort McMurray is almost exclusively impacting the education of students with disabilities and their families and is inherently discriminatory. The support staff, upon which students with disabilities, their families, and teachers rely, deserve a salary increase and a liveable wage. The Alberta government, affected school divisions, and support staff have a moral obligation to resolve labour disputes without sacrificing the education of some of the most vulnerable students and their families.   

“Students with disabilities and their families experience challenges within schools every day, from required supports not being provided, to shortened school days, to resistance to our choice for an inclusive education,” says Ose Ahamioje, a parent of a student with disabilities.  “To add to this constant struggle by excluding only our children, while their peers without disabilities continue to go to school, is unconscionable and heartbreaking. When it is only our children who are excluded from school or denied needed support to learn, it is as if the world is stating loudly to my child, ‘You are less valued than other students’, and it hurts.”  

Inclusion Alberta’s CEO, Trish Bowman, says that it is imperative that government, school divisions and unions put students first while they swiftly resolve the need for support staff to have a living wage.  

“There must be a better way to address support staff salaries without children with disabilities and their families finding themselves as the ones most pointedly caught in something they have no direct means of resolving,” says Bowman. 

Alberta Education and school divisions should act to ensure supply teachers and any certified staff not currently teaching (e.g. consultants) are allocated to schools to ensure all children can continue to attend. If all children are of equal value with equal rights, then labour actions impacting schools should apply to all students or none. This is one way families and their children with disabilities will know they and their education counts as much as that of any child.  

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Inclusion Alberta Chief Executive Officer Trish Bowman is available for interviews.   

Please contact Sara Protasow, Inclusion Alberta Communications Coordinator at sprotasow@inclusionalberta.org or 780-906-4693.  

  About Inclusion Alberta:  Inclusion Alberta is a family based, non-profit federation that advocates on behalf of children and adults with intellectual disabilities and their families. Together, we share a dream of meaningful family life and community inclusion for individuals with intellectual disabilities. As an advocacy organization we support families and individuals in their desire to be fully included in community life.