Lesley Lehman’s son, Josh, didn’t say his first word until he was six years old.

“He had no voice, nothing,” she explained in an interview Thursday.

Lesley and her husband, Mike, an EMS supervisor, spent $11,000 on speech therapy for Josh.

For three years, he was placed in an Ottawa learning disability program. When Mike moved to a new job in the Thousand Islands, they kept two homes — in Ottawa and Brockville — so Josh could continue school in Ottawa.

“He made no gains in three years,” Lehman said.

Then last September, the 12-year-old was placed in one of the province’s four “demonstration” schools. At Sagonaska, a 40-spot residential school in Belleville, he’s improved three grade levels.

He can use a phone and a computer. At the school, he has technology that turns speech to text.

“These teachers are so skilled and so unique that they have the ability to make these kids thrive,” explained Lehman, chair of Sagonaska’s parents council.

The province operates demonstration schools in Milton, London, Belleville and Ottawa for children who are deaf, autistic or severely learning disabled.

Josh started at a Grade 2 reading level and is now almost at Grade 5.

The province has stopped all enrolments in the demonstration schools for September. Families who’ve spent thousands of dollars on testing for their child to attend now fear they’re out of luck.

“We need to know whether this is just a cost-cutting measure,” said Lehman, who works for the department of national defence.

Teachers at Sagonaska haven’t been offered jobs for the next school year.

Education Minister Liz Sandals claims no decision has been made and the province is still in a “consultation” process, but parents of these most vulnerable children feel they’ve had the rug pulled from under them. Even though the parents live as far away as Timmins and Kirkland Lake, they aren’t allowed to teleconference in the consultation. They must attend in person.

Lehman fears the worst: That the decision to close the school has already been made.

“We want the Ontario government to know that our students didn’t create Ontario’s deficit and they shouldn’t be jeopardizing their education and their futures to fix it.”

Sandals insists the government hasn’t said it’s not accepting students this fall.

“We’ve asked the schools to suspend the application process until we’ve finished the consultation process,” she said.

“The issue is that there’s a lot more children who have severe learning disabilities that aren’t part of the 160 children that are getting very effective (education).

“How do we ensure all children with severe learning disabilities are able to access programs that have really high quality?”

New Democrat critic Lisa Gretzky says the students will be dumped back into the regular system.

“Students who are excelling in these specialized schools are now going to be back into the regular school system and they’re not going to have the supports they need,” she said.

“It’s just another way for the Liberals to try to save money and they’re doing it on the backs of the most vulnerable.”

This is the government that wasted $1 billion to scrap two gas plants. Whose services do they slash to balance the books? Those least able to speak for themselves: The most fragile, the severely disabled, the vulnerable.

The very people government is there to serve.