Parents of gifted students in Ottawa are breathing a sigh of relief.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has decided to temporarily halt a review process that could have greatly reduced its gifted program.
The school board met last night and voted to pause the consultation process and send the issue back to staff. They want to create an advisory group to expand the possible options for gifted students, and to find more equitable ways for students to be identified as gifted. OCDSB Vice-Chair Christine Boothby says "If you're a gifted child and you need so much more extra stimulation and you need a peer group it's really important that we have that for children. Because what we don't want to do is turn children off."
Right now parents pay for the testing themselves. Young Aidan Wilson is one of those students who says he was singled out and bullied in his regular class. His father says the board was right to put the brakes on the review process. "I'm really happy to see that most of the trustees were able to come together in kind of a common sense way and say, look we've got to get this right", says Sean Wilson.
This pushes back the school board's review of its gifted program by about a year. They want to start seeing new reports from staff on a number of related issues by May of 2017.
