A provincial plan to reduce barriers for physically disabled Manitobans will not back the Flin Flon School Division into a fiscal corner, trustees heard this week.
Trustee Leslie Fernandes spoke on a recent workshop she attended regarding the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA), which aims to make the province much more inclusive by 2023.
“We have a duty to provide accessibility to the point of undue hardship,” she told trustees at their regular meeting on Tuesday. “No one is expecting us to go put hundreds of thousands of dollars in elevators in our schools. That’s not the intent of the act, so we don’t need to panic per se, we just need to come up with a plan to make everything accessible to a point.”
Fernandes said workshop attendees learned of five standards to follow in creating a plan to comply with the act.
She said the division is to focus first on ensuring “accessible customer service” for people utilizing the schools. She gave the example of ensuring all information on paper is available in other formats.
Fernandes added that the province is preparing a training course for public-training course for public-sector workers on “attitudinal barriers and how to handle situations,” and once it is ready to go it will be offered to staff.
While there is broad agreement about the intent of AMA, concerns over the cost of implementing the legislation have been raised.
According to the Winnipeg Free Press, the Winnipeg School Division (WSD) may have to spend more than $34 million to comply with AMA.
In a January article, the Free Press cited a report by the chief superintendent stating the WSD has 17 schools that will require an elevator at a cost of $1.5 million to $2 million each.
The online version of the article prompted one reader, going by the handle comander576, to remark, “Well WSD time to sharpen your pencils, We tax payers are tapped out.”
