Education
National awards to staff at Eastview Middle School and Hunting Hills High School for dedication to students

Red Deer Public staff honoured with National Inclusive Education Award
One of Red Deer Public’s priorities is equity and ensuring fairness for all students through excellence in instruction, support for students, and reduction of barriers. As a result of this dedication, staff at Eastview Middle School, as well as a long-time Learning Assistance Teacher at Hunting Hills High School have been honoured with a national award for their commitment to inclusion of all students.
The nomination for Eastview Middle School named Teachers Hanna Delmont and Isaac Terrenzio, Learning Assistance Teacher Lynn Lawton-Paquin and Educational Assistants Jen Gouldie and Barb Yost. Hunting Hills Teacher Lesley Young was also a recipient.
The National Inclusive Education Award for Alberta is provided jointly by Inclusion Canada and Inclusion Alberta to honour a teacher, school or school division whose commitment to inclusive education is exemplary and deserving of recognition.
Lesley, who has worked in Red Deer Public Schools for 28 years, was nominated by a parent of a student at the school, and said she feels honoured to be a recipient of the prestigious award.
“I was shocked and humbled,” she said. “Our school operates under the idea of collective responsibility, so all of the students are the responsibility of all of the adults in the school. I am just a small part of the day of that particular student. I asked this student to be the manager of my rugby team, and he came out in a managerial role all of last year and was involved in every practice, every game and every team bonding activity. I have felt strongly about inclusion at our school and have worked hard to support that initiative in our school. I want all students to have access to the array of amazing opportunities offered at our school.”
Darwin Roscoe, Principal at Hunting Hills, said Lesley is deserving of the recognition.
“Lesley has been a massive contributor to student success throughout the duration of her career,” he said. “Her child-centered approach has always been front and centre of her practice.
Her work with inclusion spans well beyond students and their families and deep into our teacher’s pedagogy at the school.”
Kevin Robertson, who was Principal at Eastview at the time of the nomination, said he is proud of the entire school team. Eastview was also nominated by a parent of a student at the school.
“’It takes a village’ certainly rings true, and in this case, I am so proud of the work the school team has done and continues to do in partnership with parents. It really is a whole-team success,” he said.
Hanna said as a fifth year teacher, she has had the privilege of working with a variety of diverse students.
“When we received this award, I was extremely proud of the collaborative connection that Eastview staff takes to help meet students’ needs,” she said. “Providing a safe, caring and inclusive school environment allows all students and families to have a sense of belonging where each member can flourish in their own way.”
Isaac added receiving a national award in inclusive education is a tremendous honour.
“Being recognized for the dedication and hard work our staff puts toward ensuring that all learners, regardless of their abilities or backgrounds, have equal access to education and are supported to reach their full potential is very humbling,” he said. “Continuing to strive towards equity and inclusion in education is important in creating a welcoming learning environment for all.”
Lynn said she feels Eastview Middle, like so many others in Red Deer Public, supports all students with their academic, personal and social needs.
“I am proud to work in a school with talented, hard working and caring staff that go above and beyond to ensure that our most complex students are having a positive experience at school that includes learning curriculum, developing meaningful relationships and building skills to develop independence,” she said.
Barb added she was thrilled to hear of the award as Eastview is very deserving.
“Students with special needs should have the opportunity to learn, play and make friends with their peers,” she said, of why inclusion is important. “The whole school benefits and learns from having all students included.”
Jen, who said she feels overwhelmed with emotion after receiving the award, agreed.
“Inclusive education is important because of the moments of empathy, compassion and acceptance that our students are able to witness and be a part of everyday. It is when a student needs to draw to get their story out of their head. Then randomly, a fellow student sits down beside them and word by word, marker by marker, draws out the story. It is when a student reaches out to another student for a hug and the embrace is accepted. It is when a student is curious about what is happening in the classroom next door then they are warmly welcomed with a ‘hello!’” she said. “These types of inclusive moments impact how students view and experience the world as they walk through their lives.”
Darrin DeMale, Principal at Eastview, gives credit to his whole school team. “We have some incredibly special adults that love being with our students on a daily basis. We feel fortunate to have a group of individuals that value their presence at Eastview and value being with them and growing life skills.”
Sue Merry, Vice Principal at Eastview, added it is an honour to receive this award as a whole team. “We see this award as recognition of how our school values inclusion in the forefront of the work we are doing with our students,” she said. “It generally reflects the work of everyone at the school from our custodians to the principal. We are so proud of our teamwork.”
Lesley, as well as the staff at Eastview were honoured at the 2023 Inclusion Alberta President’s Reception last week.
Autism
Autism Rates Reach Unprecedented Highs: 1 in 12 Boys at Age 4 in California, 1 in 31 Nationally

Popular Rationalism
James Lyons-Weiler
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released its 2025 report from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, and the findings are alarming: autism spectrum disorder (ASD) now affects 1 in 31 American 8-year-olds—the highest rate ever recorded.
For boys, the numbers are even more staggering: 1 in 20 nationwide, and 1 in 12.5 in California. The report, which tracks children born in 2014, reveals a crisis growing in severity and complexity, yet broadly unacknowledged in the national discourse.
Autism has become a public health crisis of urgent concern,” the report states plainly. And yet, government agencies have offered no new national action plan, and media coverage remains anemic.
Rapidly Accelerating Trends
In just two years, autism prevalence among 8-year-olds rose 17%, from 1 in 36 to 1 in 31. This is not an anomaly. Since the CDC began tracking autism in children born in 1992, prevalence has increased nearly fivefold, defying theories that attribute the rise solely to broader diagnostic criteria or increased awareness.
The Impact of SB277 on Autism Prevalence in California
In 2015, California enacted Senate Bill 277 (SB277), which went into effect on July 1, 2016. This legislation eliminated the state’s personal belief exemption (PBE) for childhood vaccinations, making it one of only three U.S. states at the time—alongside Mississippi and West Virginia—to require full compliance with the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule for school entry, except in cases of formally approved medical exemption.
While the primary intent of SB277 was to increase vaccination rates and try to reduce outbreaks of communicable diseases like measles, its implementation has coincided with a continued—and arguably accelerated—rise in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses in the state. Data drawn from the California Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) and CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network offer a timeline of prevalence rates before and after the law’s enactment:
Between 2014 and 2017, ASD prevalence among young children in California increased from 0.86% to 1.18%—a 37.2% increase in just three years. By 2020, according to CDC ADDM surveillance, 4.5% of 8-year-olds in California had an autism diagnosis—the highest prevalence among all U.S. monitoring sites.
Percent Increase Post-SB277 (2016 to 2020):
From 1.08% (2016) to 4.5% (2020) = 316.7% increase
This dramatic rise cannot be definitively attributed to SB277 alone, but its temporal proximity to the policy change—which effectively compelled full vaccine schedule compliance across all demographic groups—raises serious questions. Notably, this increase occurred within California’s already robust autism tracking infrastructure (CDDS), known for conservative case identification that focuses on children with moderate to severe impairment requiring lifelong services.
While correlation does not imply causation, the magnitude and timing of California’s autism surge post-SB277 should compel further independent investigation, particularly given that:
- SB277 removed opt-out options for thousands of previously unvaccinated or selectively vaccinated children;
- The increase is most visible in 4-year-old cohorts tracked soon after the law took effect;
- California’s autism rates now exceed 1 in 12 for boys.
In light of these findings, California may now serve not only as a terrible national model for vaccine compliance—but also as a bellwether for unintended consequences of compulsory public health policy.
Alarming Trends in IQ
Contrary to such assumption of ASD leading to giftedness, the ADDM data also show that the proportion of children with higher IQs is actually decreasing, while the share of children with intellectual disability (IQ ≤ 70) has risen. Nearly 2 out of 3 children (64%) diagnosed with autism in this cohort fall below the IQ 85 threshold, indicating moderate to severe impairment.
These are hard realities that many will find unacceptable. Still, nationally, nearly 40% (39.6%) of 8-year-olds with ASD had IQ ≤ 70. Another 24.2% had borderline IQ (71–85). 36.1% had IQ > 85.
Since autism has a motor neuron impairment, demonstrated IQ may be an inexact measure of actual intelligence, as Spellers The Movie has taught the world.
From a clinical viewpoint, the ADDM report’s data quietly demolish the idea that autism incidence increases are driven by mild or high-functioning cases. Since the early 2000s, the proportion of cases with average or high IQ has dropped, while those with intellectual disability have surged. This trend—now reaching nearly 64%—indicates that autism’s rise is not a matter of greater sensitivity in diagnosis. Rather, it appears we are witnessing a real increase in biologically significant, disabling neurodevelopmental injury.
Reversal of Historic Ethnodemographic Trends
The report presents data on racial disparity that now represents a reversal:
Asian/Pacific Islander (3.75%), Black (3.63%), Hispanic (3.58%), and Multiracial (3.27%) 8-year-olds are now more likely to be identified with autism than White children (2.77%)
This is a complete reversal of pre-2018 trends, where White children had the highest identification rates. Children from low-income neighborhoods had higher prevalence of ASD than those from high-income areas in several states, e.g., Utah and Wisconsin
The California Signal: A Harbinger of What’s to Come?
San Diego, California, stands out as a sentinel site—and a warning. According to Supplementary Table 8 of the report, 8.87% of 4-year-old boys in California are diagnosed with autism. Further breakdown shows even more troubling disparities:
- Black boys: ~12%
- Hispanic boys: ~10.5%
- Asian boys: ~9%
- White boys: ~5.3%
These numbers imply that 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 young boys of color in California may carry an autism diagnosis by the time they reach second grade.
Are Environmental Triggers Driving This?
One overlooked possibility is that cumulative exposures—including the full CDC childhood vaccine schedule, lockdown-era developmental disruption, and coexisting toxicants—may act in concert to dysregulate immune and neurological development. California’s 2016 vaccine mandate removed all non-medical exemptions, making full compliance unavoidable for most working families. This timing intersects directly with birth years showing the steepest autism rises. If these policy changes are contributing, even partly, to this epidemiological shift, they demand urgent investigation—not blind defense.
The demographic disparities further reinforce the environmental hypothesis. Among 4-year-olds, autism rates among children of color now exceed those of White children by 40–90%, depending on the group and region.
Public Health Policies Under Scrutiny
Importantly, California’s strict mandate—which bars children from school or daycare without full vaccination—creates a uniquely high-exposure environment for children whose families cannot afford alternatives. These children are also more likely to be Black or Hispanic, compounding the already sharp disparities now seen in ASD prevalence. In San Diego’s 2018 birth cohort, over 1 in 10 Black and Hispanic boys have an autism diagnosis at age four. The notion that this simply reflects “better identification” strains all credibility.
Additionally, pandemic-era lockdowns, prolonged school closures, and extended masking requirements in California may have played a compounding role in disrupting normal developmental pathways for toddlers and young children during formative years.
The Cost of Inaction
The fiscal and societal burden of autism is already astronomical. A 2020 economic model projected U.S. autism-related costs could exceed $5.5 trillion per year by 2060 if trends continue unmitigated. That estimate did not anticipate the rapid acceleration seen in this latest data.
Your tax dollars have funded years of futile autism genetics research that has not led to any prevention, mitation or treatment, and any given individual genes from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) still explain only a sliver of ASD heritability. Meanwhile, evidence continues to build around plausible environmental and iatrogenic mechanisms—oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and aluminum adjuvants, among others—without serious investment in confirming or ruling them out. If the CDC were tracking causation with the same rigor it tracks prevalence, we might already have answers.
A Turning Point?
Public health leadership now faces a choice: double down on statistical obfuscation, or finally confront the rising tide of childhood neurological injury. The tools exist—retrospective cohort comparisons, machine learning to detect risk patterns, causal inference modeling of environmental exposures, and most critically, honest, open-ended research. The CDC and NIH must stop chasing only genetic ghosts and start investigating the real, tangible environmental shifts that mirror this crisis in time.
For decades, the CDC, NIH, and IOM have promoted the idea that the rise in autism is primarily diagnostic, while excluding or downplaying environmental and iatrogenic hypotheses. But the current data—showing accelerating prevalence, worsening severity, and growing racial disparities—make this position untenable. It is now clear that narrative closure, not causal closure, has been guiding public messaging. The refusal to explore vaccine adjuvants, prenatal toxic exposures, chronic immune activation, and regulatory policy failures reflects a broken system more committed to preserving public confidence than discovering the truth.
In a striking statement during an April 2025 Cabinet meeting, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared,
“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
The promise represents a historic shift in federal tone—marking the first time in decades that a sitting health official has committed to openly investigating all plausible causes of autism, including environmental and iatrogenic exposures.
Popular Rationalism is a reader-supported publication.
To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Education
Schools should focus on falling math and reading grades—not environmental activism

From the Fraser Institute
In 2019 Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustees passed a “climate emergency” resolution and promised to develop a climate action plan. Not only does the TDSB now have an entire department in their central office focused on this goal, but it also publishes an annual climate action report.
Imagine you were to ask a random group of Canadian parents to describe the primary mission of schools. Most parents would say something along the lines of ensuring that all students learn basic academic skills such as reading, writing and mathematics.
Fewer parents are likely to say that schools should focus on reducing their environmental footprints, push students to engage in environmental activism, or lobby for Canada to meet the 2016 Paris Agreement’s emission-reduction targets.
And yet, plenty of school boards across Canada are doing exactly that. For example, the Seven Oaks School Division in Winnipeg is currently conducting a comprehensive audit of its environmental footprint and intends to develop a climate action plan to reduce its footprint. Not only does Seven Oaks have a senior administrator assigned to this responsibility, but each of its 28 schools has a designated climate action leader.
Other school boards have gone even further. In 2019 Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustees passed a “climate emergency” resolution and promised to develop a climate action plan. Not only does the TDSB now have an entire department in their central office focused on this goal, but it also publishes an annual climate action report. The most recent report is 58 pages long and covers everything from promoting electric school buses to encouraging schools to gain EcoSchools certification.
Not to be outdone, the Vancouver School District (VSD) recently published its Environmental Sustainability Plan, which highlights the many green initiatives in its schools. This plan states that the VSD should be the “greenest, most sustainable school district in North America.”
Some trustees want to go even further. Earlier this year, the British Columbia School Trustees Association released its Climate Action Working Group report that calls on all B.C. school districts to “prioritize climate change mitigation and adopt sustainable, impactful strategies.” It also says that taking climate action must be a “core part” of school board governance in every one of these districts.
Apparently, many trustees and school board administrators think that engaging in climate action is more important than providing students with a solid academic education. This is an unfortunate example of misplaced priorities.
There’s an old saying that when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Organizations have finite resources and can only do a limited number of things. When schools focus on carbon footprint audits, climate action plans and EcoSchools certification, they invariably spend less time on the nuts and bolts of academic instruction.
This might be less of a concern if the academic basics were already understood by students. But they aren’t. According to the most recent data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the math skills of Ontario students declined by the equivalent of nearly two grade levels over the last 20 years while reading skills went down by about half a grade level. The downward trajectory was even sharper in B.C., with a more than two grade level decline in math skills and a full grade level decline in reading skills.
If any school board wants to declare an emergency, it should declare an academic emergency and then take concrete steps to rectify it. The core mandate of school boards must be the education of their students.
For starters, school boards should promote instructional methods that improve student academic achievement. This includes using phonics to teach reading, requiring all students to memorize basic math facts such as the times table, and encouraging teachers to immerse students in a knowledge-rich learning environment.
School boards should also crack down on student violence and enforce strict behaviour codes. Instead of kicking police officers out of schools for ideological reasons, school boards should establish productive partnerships with the police. No significant learning will take place in a school where students and teachers are unsafe.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with school boards ensuring that their buildings are energy efficient or teachers encouraging students to take care of the environment. The problem arises when trustees, administrators and teachers lose sight of their primary mission. In the end, schools should focus on academics, not environmental activism.
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Ottawa Confirms China interfering with 2025 federal election: Beijing Seeks to Block Joe Tay’s Election
-
Energy2 days ago
Indigenous-led Projects Hold Key To Canada’s Energy Future
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust
-
Energy2 days ago
Many Canadians—and many Albertans—live in energy poverty
-
2025 Federal Election20 hours ago
BREAKING: THE FEDERAL BRIEF THAT SHOULD SINK CARNEY
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Real Homes vs. Modular Shoeboxes: The Housing Battle Between Poilievre and Carney
-
Business2 days ago
Canada Urgently Needs A Watchdog For Government Waste
-
International2 days ago
Pope Francis has died aged 88