The recent Department of Education report on special education answers the anguished appeals of special-need students’ parents with patronizing platitudes and vague future promises, while championing the elimination of the sole concrete program offering some parents a measure of hope. I don’t know which I find more worrisome, that the Education Department actually believes this waste of trees is an appropriate response to the impassioned pleas of the parents attending the public sessions, or that I’m agreeing with Charles Cirtwell, the uber-capitalism mouthpiece.

How can parents have any faith the public school system will be able to provide the services the report assigns it, when the Department of Education just lost a case for inability to provide required learning supports and the department slashed the division funding for student services by almost 60 per cent this fiscal year?

Sadly, it appears our current government is prepared to write off several hundred students while their political bumbling robs our children of their right to education, all for the sake of appearances. The future societal cost of this snafu will make the cost of the tuition support program look like pocket change.

Dave Wilkins, Upper Tantallon