Parallel Session Proceedings »
3.5.10 The Role of School Trustees in Ensuring Gifted Education in Schools
In 2017-2018, a large Ontario school board undertook a comprehensive review of its gifted education program. This included an examination of gifted programming across Ontario and a survey of the Board’s students with a gifted profile. The review provided a number of recommendations for augmenting the Board’s existing program, particularly in grades 7 to 12. This included offering secondary students options for credit acceleration, providing professional development on enrichment for staff and offering experiential learning opportunities to gifted students similar to those available in the Board’s existing grade 4 to 6 gifted learners. An earlier overall review of the Board’s Special Education program had not dealt with the gifted program so this review of the gifted education program was overdue. When the review results and recommendations were initially presented to the Board of Trustees, trustees took exception to the inadequacy of this review and did not accept it, with administration being instructed to re-examine the situation. This produced this new and enlightened approach to gifted education in the Board which was approved by the trustees and which is now being implemented thanks to appropriate resources being allocated in the Board’s current year budget. This is an example of how trustees can impact the delivery of gifted education in schools. What is to be learned from this? This presentation will present some strategies which those in the gifted community might use to ensure that the trustees responsible for their schools and gifted programming are familiar with gifted education and are willing use their influence to effect appropriate gifted education programming in these schools. If there is not this will to implement advanced approaches to gifted education, then all of the research and study of gifted education goes for naught. But even more importantly, gifted students are cheated of the challenging programming which they need to be all that they can be. This presentation will include a video presentation that will detail the school board’s situation and how it all unfolded for the benefit of the board’s gifted learners.