‘I was just kind of taken aback’

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This article was published 09/10/2022 (1188 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Transcona mother wants her school division to update its transportation policy so both students with disabilities and young children who do not have a caregiver who can safely walk them to the bus stop are eligible for door-to-door service.

More than a month after the academic year began, Victoria Melvin-Mondor said she has yet to be able to cement a safe bus stop for her five-year-old daughter.

The kindergartener was assigned to a designated drop-off and pick-up site located 500 metres from their house in Winnipeg’s Canterbury Crossing community, a new development in the River East Transcona School Division.

The stop is a six-minute walk from their residence, according to Google Maps. For Melvin-Mondor, who has a traumatic brain injury and is partially blind, the one-way trip spanning three blocks can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

“For someone in good health, it’s nothing,” she said. “But for someone who is cognitively challenged like myself, it’s like asking me to run a marathon (both ways), and every time I leave the house, I basically have to just hope that I don’t faint. I hope that I don’t have dizzy spells. I hope that I don’t fall.”

The absence of sidewalks in the new development and imminent plunge in temperatures — along with snow, ice and shorter days that will result in dark mornings and afternoons — are causes for further safety concern, Melvin-Mondor said.

The 31-year-old continues to recover from a major emergency surgery she underwent in September 2021 to remove a mass found inside her frontal lobe and two subsequent strokes. She was diagnosed with diabetes shortly before the serious health issues began; initially, doctors thought she had diabetic ketoacidosis, but deteriorating symptoms prompted multiple hospital visits and an MRI.

Two years ago, the active mother drove herself to and from her job at the airport daily and frequented the gym. She has since lost her license and much of her independence.

“For someone in good health, it’s nothing… But for someone who is cognitively challenged like myself, it’s like asking me to run a marathon (both ways).”–Victoria Melvin-Mondor

The family learned of the stop situation roughly a week before classes began. Upon a recent request for a route change, Melvin-Mondor said she was told via phone call that there is nothing the RETSD transportation department can do because of their limited exception rules.

Division policy states students with intellectual and physical disabilities “may be picked up and returned to the home when necessary because of their disability.” There is no clause about granting school transportation exceptions because of a parent’s disability.

“I was just kind of taken aback,” Melvin-Mondor said, calling the policy both “flawed” and “unreasonable” — especially given RETSD is charging her family $400 annually for the school bus service. “I just want to get my daughter to school. It should be a super simple task.”

Melvin-Mondor supports her family through disability income assistance, which she said is not enough to pay for daycare support or other help to assist with getting her daughter to school. She is the only adult available to get her kindergartener ready in the mornings because her husband has to leave early and work long hours to run and develop his new renovation business.

The mother emailed her city councillor in mid-September and after being redirected, contacted her MLA and several trustees to raise concerns about the policy last week.

“I was just kind of taken aback… I just want to get my daughter to school. It should be a super simple task.”–Victoria Melvin-Mondor

In an emailed statement Friday, the division’s secretary-treasurer said senior administration learned of the situation on Wednesday and the parties were exploring options.

“Our transportation department has informed us that school buses are unable to access some small roads in newer developments due to the angle of the bends,” Elise Downey, who is also the chief financial officer at RETSD, said in an email.

Downey said she has been in touch with the family to work with them on finding “a suitable option.” The RETSD statement did not address the division’s policy.

One-size-fits-all policies harm people with disabilities “all too often,” said Joelle Robinson, chairwoman of the Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities.

“Every bureaucracy needs to have the ability to look at common sense and to look at the impact that things actually have on people,” Robinson said, adding there should be a caveat written into RETSD’s particular policy that allows leaders to make stop adjustments at their discretion.

For now, Melvin-Mondor said she is going to take the division up on an offer to have an educational assistant come to their house in the mornings before school.

RETSD contacted her with three options on Friday afternoon, after the Free Press reached out to the division for comment, she said.

Citing the narrow streets in the area, an administrator suggested either another child at her daughter’s school could walk the five-year-old to the bus stop; an educational assistant could come escort her; or a microbus could be arranged, although the final option would take months to organize, the mother said.

Melvin-Mondor said she is skeptical of the street size being an issue because a bus stops several blocks away, and many construction vehicles frequent the area as it continues to be developed. The mother of one plans to continue advocating for door-to-door service, be it via regular school bus or microbus.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie