VICTORIA, BC—A recent decision by the province’s ministry of education to fully fund special-needs children enrolled in an independent or private school spells relief for Caroline Mavridis, the mother of twin 12-year-old boys.

Scott and Neil are both students at Pacific Christian School in Victoria—and both have Down syndrome.

“As a family with children with special needs, we’re always having to look for more funding and basically advocate for them all the time,” she says. “It takes a big weight off my shoulders.”

In B.C., all independent schools—80 per cent of which are religious—receive a level of funding that is no more than half of the per-pupil grant the government gives to the public school system.

But in September, education minister Shirley Bond announced that in the interests of “equity,” independent schools would now get the same level of funding as public schools to cover the extra cost of providing services and programs to 850 special-needs students. <“We made the argument that a lot of the needs we were providing for these students were not necessarily educational, but basic healthcare needs,” says Henry Contant, executive director of the Society of Christian Schools in B.C.

“When you’re helping a student with toileting and all those kinds of issues—feeding and care—they should be fully funded.”

But while four consecutive education ministers did not dispute the logic of their case, the consistent reply was that they could not afford the added cost.

That changed in July, when the province reported a $2.6 billion surplus for the 2004-2005 fiscal year, and sought the public’s input on where best to spend it.

“So when they were announcing all of this surplus money, well, obviously, we tied the two together for them,” says Contant.

For the 30 special-needs kids at Pacific Christian, being fully funded will not mean any changes in the current level of services and programs, since the school has “juggled other things around to make sure they got everything they needed,” says Mavrikis.

“But that came at a price,” says principal Bill Helmus, “because we had significant deficits for that portion of our budget every year.”

Helmus is hopeful the additional revenue will wipe out all or most of that deficit. “It’s certainly not going to be anything extra,” he says.

But not every Christian school has had the resources to offer a comprehensive special-needs program, and Helmus believes this is a victory for them, too.

“I think you’re going to see more schools who have always thought they couldn’t do it say, ‘Okay, if we are going to get equitable funding, we can now do this as well,’” he says.

Contant says that bodes well for parents who may have been hesitant about enrolling a handicapped child in an independent school because of the disparity in funding.

“Having said that,” he adds, “I know some parents who didn’t have confidence in the public school system were already enrolling their kids in the independent school system, because they felt that even with less funding, they were doing a better job at it.”

Neither Contant nor Helmus would comment as to whether the government could have responded sooner to their pleas for full funding.

“In the end, when we got the commitment from the government, we were pleased at how quickly they did move to implement that,” says Contant.

Mavrikis is less concerned about how long it took the government to provide the additional funding than whether or not this is really its final word on this issue.

“It concerns me,” she says, “that it could be also taken away again. They’ve taken money away before. It’s here now, but is it going to stay here?”