Mr. Mark O'Connor:

I acknowledge that significant work has gone into this. We all know anecdotally that school principals and teachers have been working throughout the summer to get the show back on the road during what would ordinarily be the summer holidays. This has to be acknowledged and commended.

In general, a lot of the information from the Department is reasonably good. Speaking from the perspective of special education, some situations need a little more teasing out and, in our opinion, some situations have not been fully considered. We have already mentioned young people transitioning from special education to mainstream education who spend part of their day in both. We have already mentioned the SNAs hovering between two or three classes, where each class is meant to be a bubble. The issue we feel has not been addressed adequately is that of children with complex disabilities and medical needs. Many of these children will not be back in school any time soon. We do not believe the Department's guidelines will allow them adequate access to a full education. In our previous survey in May, parents were clear that what their children needed was access to a highly skilled teacher and that they, as parents, were not in a position to provide this education. We would like to see a little bit more thought put into this.