My son (now 16) has always had a difficult time in school. He was labelled early as hyper and impulsive, but he was happy and wanted to befriend everyone. This label followed him everywhere. The phone calls came so often and were so stressful that, every day at 1:30, I would turn my phone on silent because, like clockwork, they would call and complain about him, and I would stress and feel hurt, knowing that this was it for him; this was going to be his whole school experience, no matter where we moved or what we did. He was finally assessed in school in grade 7 and received an IEP (I and a couple of his teachers had asked for it before and were told, “No, he needs to try harder.”) Also, it seems that, even with a mild learning disability, the teachers expected him to just try harder, because it didn’t show, and he was well-spoken, so they didn’t fully believe he needed accommodations. Teachers can use their discretion with IEPs; this is a bad idea. So here we are, he is 16 and had the last year off school to tend to his failing mental health; school, never being a positive experience for him, was even harder to attend with these health struggles. It was a long year of depression and suicide attempts, and of course, hospital stays. We didn’t know the full extent of his mental issues, but it was obvious there was something going on. It started with insomnia, which made it impossible to get up in the morning. They tried adjusting his schedule, but things got worse; he didn’t show up for a few days, then when he did go, they would suspend him! Eventually, they told me to just take him off the register and say I was homeschooling. They also said that this conversation never happened. I have heard from a few parents in the same situation who heard the same line. At the start of this year, he was feeling better and ready to return to school. I brought him in to register at his home school CCI (Cobourg, Ontario), the school he has attended before, and they told me they would call me with an appointment. They did call me, not to book an appointment, but to tell me that they just couldn’t take him at this time; they can’t put a grade 11 in with grade 9s and 10s. He needed too many credits. They suggested he go to the alternative school. My heart sank. I said, even with his accommodations and his new diagnosis? He said they could not accommodate him at this time; there was not enough funding. He is the vice principal; he specifically told me that he, the principal, and another school staff member had a meeting about it and decided this. This is not right. I went back to get his paperwork for the alternative school (we both felt defeated, and his mood was going downhill at this rejection). As I was waiting in the office, I watched a man walk up and ask to register his daughter; she was in grade 12 and wanted to switch schools. The secretary handed him the forms with a smile and asked him where she lives. He replied Port Hope (the next town over). They also claimed that he didn’t have an IEP. I insisted he did, but the vice principal, who would not come out and talk to me himself, also said no, he didn’t have one. I went straight home and dug up a copy from grade 9 at that school, signed by the principal. How was this removed from his record? Was this planned so they could cover themselves while turning us away? So there is very planned-out discrimination in the school system. This is how mental health gets a stigma; this is how the stigma is kept alive; this is how these kids slip through the cracks. The message is, “We don’t want to deal with you.” If a child took a year off to fight for his or her life due to any other illness or disease, the school would celebrate their return; hell, they would even have a community fundraiser. Dawn Niemi 1-289-251-1461