A Disaster for Students with Disabilities — Bill 101 Puts Student Achievement for Students with Disabilities Last! — Draft Brief to the Ontario Legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy Submitted by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance

DRAFT ONLY

Send feedback by April 23, 2026 to aodafeedback@gmail.com

A Disaster for Students with Disabilities — Bill 101 Puts Student Achievement for Students with Disabilities Last! — Brief to the Ontario Legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy Submitted by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance

Introduction and Summary

Bill 101 is fatally flawed. It should be withdrawn. It will cause substantial damage to Ontario’s publicly funded K-12 school system and to local democracy. It is a disaster for vulnerable and chronically underserved students with disabilities in Ontario schools. A vote for this bill is a vote to harm students, especially those with disabilities.

In this brief, we explain what is wrong with Bill 101 and why it should be withdrawn. In the case that the bill proceeds despite our objections, we list eight proposed amendments to the bill which we seek.

Founded in 2005 shortly after the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act was passed, the AODA Alliance is a voluntary non-partisan grassroots coalition of individuals and community organizations. Our mission is:

“To contribute to the achievement of a barrier-free Ontario for all persons with disabilities by promoting and supporting the timely, effective, and comprehensive implementation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.”

To learn about us, visit the AODA Alliance website. Our coalition is the successor to the non-partisan grassroots Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA) Committee. The ODA Committee advocated for more than 10 years, from 1994 to 2005, for the enactment of strong, effective disability accessibility legislation. Our coalition builds on the ODA Committee’s work. We draw our supporters from the ODA Committee’s broad grassroots base. To learn about the ODA Committee’s history, visit the ODA Committee’s legacy website.

Our volunteer non-partisan coalition has within it the fullest institutional memory about the AODA available in Ontario. Our extensive advocacy efforts over the past two decades have included extensive efforts to get an AODA Education Accessibility Standard enacted. We have devoted massive non-partisan volunteer efforts to tearing down the many disability barriers in Ontario schools. This is documented on the AODA Alliance website’s education page.

Each party in the Legislature has made election commitments to the AODA Alliance in several Ontario elections. We have been quoted, cited and commended by MPPs from all parties. We have also been widely consulted on disability issues by the Federal Government, several other provinces, and other countries ranging from as far away as New Zealand and Israel.

We summarize our concerns with Bill 101 as follows:

Despite its name, this bill has nothing to do with student achievement
Bill 101 doesn’t help vulnerable students with disabilities but instead makes things worse for them
Bill 101 is a massive unnecessary and counterproductive provincial power grab creating costly red tape but with no plan of action
Bill 101 creates enormous burdensome new red tape and bureaucracy, draining money from classrooms
The Ford government announced no public and comprehensive plan of action for all these new provincial powers
Bill 101 doesn’t spell out what powers are left for elected trustees to exercise
Bill 101 reduces much-needed local democratic oversight of unelected senior school board officials
Bill 101 lacks proper safeguards to limit sweeping powers it gives the education minister and cabinet
Bill 101 seriously reduces assistance to parents of students having unresolved problems with school officials
Bill 101 makes it less likely that people would want to run for the position of trustee
Bill 101 creates harmful secrecy around school budgets
The minister’s plan for student absenteeism under the bill ignores needs of students with disabilities
Bill 101 improperly targets the Ontario public school boards association, seemingly attempting to silence criticism of some provincial policies
Bill 101 and the government’s failure to properly consult the public on it is a slap in the face for parents, including parents of students with disabilities

We propose amendments to the bill that would:

Specify that the bill does not go into effect (except regarding the duty to enact the promised education accessibility standard under the accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) at least until 2030, after the auditor general has released a public costing of the bill and after the government has released draft regulations, guidelines, directions and orders needed to enable school boards to prepare for it.
List in clear and detailed terms the powers of school board trustees.
Require all new school construction to be accessible to people with disabilities
Require the education minister to consult the public and key education stakeholders when developing any regulations guidelines, orders or directions provided for in the bill.
Require that before the government makes or amends any regulation, policy, guideline, direction or orders under the bill, it must publicly post a draft of it for public input.
Require that no regulation, guideline, order, policy or other direction under this bill may create or perpetuate disability barriers against students with disabilities.
Set clear benchmarks for deciding when any of the eight school boards now under provincial supervision is restored to local democratic self-government.
Require the restoration of those eight school boards to local democratic self-government by November 15, 2026 unless the minister orders no later than September 1, 2026 that a school board is to remain under provincial supervision.
Prescribe clear grounds for ordering that a school board remain under provincial supervision after November 15, 2026.
Not limit the power of any person to apply to the divisional court of Ontario for judicial review of a minister’s order stopping the restoration of local democratic governance of a school board now under provincial supervision.
Require that the government enact an education accessibility standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act by November 1, 2026 taking into account the recommendations it received in 2022 from the government-appointed K-12 education standards development committee.

2. Bill 101 is Fatally Flawed and Should Not Be Passed

Despite Its Name, This Bill has Nothing to do with Student Achievement

Bill 101 is called the “Putting Student Achievement First Act.” Yet it provides virtually nothing for or about student achievement. The word “student” appears only a handful of times in the 75 pages of dense, hard-to-decode legislation, apart from references to the bill’s title.

This bill provides no rights for students. It establishes no new educational programs, services or supports for students. The bill’s title and the rhetoric promoting the bill distract from its contents.

Bill 101 Doesn’t Help Vulnerable Students with Disabilities but Instead Makes Things Worse for Them

This bill does absolutely nothing to address the chronic disadvantage that over one third of a million vulnerable students with disabilities/special education needs face in Ontario schools. To the contrary it risks making “student achievement” worse for these students. The bill does not even include the words “disabilities” or “special education.” By “students with disabilities,” we refer to disability as defined in the Ontario Human Rights Code. We do not limit ourselves to the unjustifiably narrower and outdated term “exceptional pupils” under the Education Act. That term and the related term “exceptionalities” governs who is entitled to special education under the Education Act. The Ontario Human Rights Code requires every school board and the Ontario Government to effectively accommodate the disability-related learning needs of all students with disabilities, whether or not their disability falls within the narrower term “exceptionality” within the Education Act and regulations enacted under it.

Just two years ago, a Trenton high school student, Landyn Ferris, died all alone in his school’s isolation room. His body was found, cold and unsupervised by staff. There has been no coroner’s inquest or other independent investigation. The Ontario Government has enacted nothing to prevent this from happening again.

For well over four years, this Government has had a comprehensive, practical roadmap for removing the many disability barriers in the K-12 school system. It received the final report of the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee on January 28, 2022. For all this time, the Government has had full legislative power to enact any or all of those recommendations with any variations it wishes under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.

We have repeatedly asked for the Government to enact the promised Education Accessibility Standard, yet it has refused to do so. It has enacted none of the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee’s recommendations. Over the past four years, the Ford Government has continued leaving a plethora of disability barriers in place in local school boards, while allowing new ones to be created.

This bill inexcusably misses major and glaringly obvious opportunities to promote accessibility for students, staff and family members with disabilities. For examples, the bill gives the Education Minister sweeping authority over real estate dealings by school boards, including building construction and renovation. Yet nothing in the bill requires the Minister to ensure that any such construction is fully accessible to students, staff and parents with disabilities. The Government has a long track record of spending public money on new construction with accessibility problems. See for example the mess the Government made of the new Toronto courthouse that was recently opened, which the AODA Alliance revealed in a widely viewed online video.

Over the past half decade, the AODA Alliance has called on the Government time and again to require that new school construction funded by the billions of dollars it has announced in this area be required to meet the full accessibility requirements that the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee’s final report recommended. The Government has not announced any action in response to those requests. See for example the June 16, 2021 AODA Alliance Update and the April 8, 2024 AODA Alliance Update.

As discussed further below, the bill gives the Minister of Education and Cabinet massive new highly discretionary powers. It does not require the Minister or Cabinet to ensure that their use of those discretionary powers creates no new barriers impeding students with disabilities. People with disabilities have a long history of governments creating new disability barriers when they have unchecked sweeping discretionary powers. Students with disabilities and their parents learned this the hard way in the school system during the Ford Government’s response to COVID-19 pandemic. See the AODA Alliance website’s COVID-19 page.

We have ample proof of what to expect for students with disabilities at school boards where the Ontario Government and the Minister of Education can micromanage the minutia at those boards. The Minister has not demonstrated and cannot show that there have been any major improvements at the eight school boards he now runs through his appointed supervisors. Those boards serve over one third of all Ontario students. The AODA Alliance and others have shown that for students with disabilities, things have gotten worse under provincial supervision. This was detailed at a January 28, 2026 Queen’s Park news conference and the recent April 13, 2026 TDSB Special Education Advisory Committee Public Forum for parents of students with disabilities/special education needs. It is noteworthy that the Minister’s TDSB Supervisor (who reports directly to the education minister did not even attend that forum to listen to parents’ gut-wrenching accounts.

When parents encounter a systemic disability barrier at school, it is virtually impossible to get the Ministry of Education to do anything about it. A parent’s only hope, or that of a parents’ organization, would be to get a trustee to raise it as a recurring policy matter at the board and for the trustees to vote for action to fix the problem. This bill does nothing to make this easier. It does a great deal to make it harder, as the analysis throughout this brief demonstrates.

Bill 101 is a Massive Unnecessary and Counterproductive Provincial Power Grab Creating Costly Red Tape but with No Plan of Action

Bill 101 is a massive provincial power grab. The education minister clearly wants to abolish elected trustees altogether, based on what he’s been saying for months. Yet there has been ample public pressure against their abolition.

It appears as if the Minister was forced to keep trustees in place in some form. His solution is to leave them and local school boards with much less power to do anything without provincial approval.

This bill gives the minister of education enormous control over the fine details of the operations of school boards across Ontario. It amounts to provincial micromanagement of classes all over Ontario.

Neither the bill nor the Minister’s extensive April 13, 2026 news conference shows what the Minister needs or wants to achieve in the classroom that he cannot do under his existing powers. The Minister has many powers given to him by the Education Act, supplemented by the new powers the Ford Government gave him in 2023 under its Bill 98. He got even more powers in 2025 under the controversial Bill 33.

In addition, for years, the Ministry of Education has issued and updated a wide range of “Program and Policy Memos” to school boards. The Minister has not claimed that school boards are not following these, nor has he shown that they are an insufficient way to put student achievement first.

Bill 101 Creates Enormous Burdensome New Red Tape and Bureaucracy, Draining Money from Classrooms

The Ford Government has many times said it is committed to cutting red tape and eliminating bureaucracy. Yet Bill 101 creates enormous new and costly red tape and bureaucracy in the administration of schools and school boards across Ontario. It appears to be the largest injection of red tape and added bureaucracy into the school system in decades.

The bill creates a dizzying maze of new regulations the Ford Cabinet can enact and yet more regulations the education minister can create. On top of that, it mandates a veritable blizzard of other new policies, directives, guidelines and orders that the Minister can issue. Just keeping track of them will be an administrative nightmare.

This bill could be better entitled “Putting Red Tape and Bloated Bureaucracy First.” The education minister will need to greatly expand his staff and/or his Ministry’s staff to draft all these regulations, orders, guidelines and directives, to explain them all to 72 school boards, and then to make the many decisions that this bill assigns to him over each board.

As it is, school boards are annually required to file a detailed Special Education Plan with the Ministry of Education. A school board can spend a great deal of time on developing this provincial filing.

Each board’s Special Education Advisory Committee must be consulted every year on the board’s Special Education Plan. School board trustees must approve the Special Education Plan before it can be filed with the Ministry. Yet it appears that no one at the Ministry actually reads each school board’s Special Education Plan to ensure that it is sufficient to meet the needs of the board’s students with disabilities/special education needs. The Ministry does not monitor to make sure it actually implements its Special Education Plan.

Imagine school board officials having to fill out a blizzard of new provincial forms and filings under Bill 101 to seek the Minister’s approval for decision after decision that used to be made locally without all that red tape. Someone in the Minister’s office has to review all those forms, ask for more information if they feel they need it, and then advise the Minister on how to respond to each request. It is fair to expect bureaucratic delays in getting a decision from the Minister. All this red tape will only work to the disadvantage of students.

A fiscally responsible Government insists on costing new programs and new bureaucracy before they decide whether to create it. Has the Ford Government costed all this new bureaucratic burden on the Ontario Government and on 72 school boards? Is it planning to allocate more budget to cover all these new costs? Otherwise, this new hefty cost burden will come out of classrooms. That is not putting student achievement first.

To put student achievement first, the Government needs to allocate more funding to the classroom, not to mountains of new provincial bureaucracy at the Minister’s beck and call.

Making this bill’s red tape even more costly, without a dime of added benefit in the classroom, school boards will have a nightmare figuring out when they need to get Ministry approval and what rules, guidelines or directions apply to any specific action they are considering. Just the training costs alone are worrisome. School boards will fear that they need to consult lawyers time and again to figure out what they can do, more than ever before.

This makes Bill 101 a troubling barrier to efficiency in the operation of school boards. If you want a law to change what people do and not cause any adverse collateral damage, the law must be clear and easy to read, navigate and use. Bill 101 is an abject failure on that score.

The Ford Government Announced No Public and Comprehensive Plan of Action for all these New Provincial Powers

The Ford Government has not announced any comprehensive plans of what it plans to do with all these sweeping new powers. It has only made public statements about a few measures. A Government would not go to such lengths to grant itself so many new powers unless it had an agenda of what it plans to do with them. The public deserves to see those plans before any votes on this bill. The bill should not go into force until school boards have a great deal of lead time to prepare for massive changes.

Bill 101 Doesn’t Spell Out What Powers are Left for Elected Trustees to Exercise

When he publicly announced the bill at his April 13, 2026 news conference, Education Minister Calandra announced as a bedrock feature that the bill substantially reduces the power of elected school board trustees. Yet the long, highly technical bill makes it very hard if not impossible to figure out what powers are left to school board trustees.

No provision in this complex bill lists the powers of trustees. In his lengthy April 13, 2026 news conference, Education Minister Calandra never offered a clear and comprehensive description of what trustees can do if Bill 101 is enacted. It’s quite possible Mr. Calandra genuinely does not know.

It is usual for legislation to spell out the powers and duties of a specific board, commission, office or public official. Bill 101 never does so for trustees in over 75 pages of detailed provisions. That is extremely bad legislative planning. It creates problems in 72 school boards.

How is a member of the public to be able to decide whether it is worth their time and expense to run for the position of school board trustee? The first question they’d ask themselves is: “What can a school board trustee do?” Even if they paid a lawyer handsomely to wade through this legislative maze, they’d be left totally confused and uncertain.

How is a trustee in office or school board senior officials to know what lies within the proper mandate of the trustees? This is an invitation to chaos.

From the Minister’s statements over the past months vilifying elected trustees as a whole, one would have thought that trustees up to now were granted a great deal of power under the Education Act. In fact, their mandate has been gradually whittled down over the years. The last Conservative Ontario Government under Premier Mike Harris reduced their powers.

In addition, school board senior staff have further whittled away at what trustees can do. It is not unusual for school board senior staff to tell trustees that they may not make decisions on “operational matters.” They can tell trustees that a concern that they are raising is an “operational matter.” This has included matters of board policy which trustees were elected to formulate and oversee. This power has become a magic wand that unelected senior staff can wave whenever they wish to try to block trustees from overriding something that the senior staff want to do. It is contrary to fundamental principles of democratic accountability.

Nothing permits such a massive incursion into what elected trustees may do. Of interest, Bill 101’s massive provincial power grab lets the Minister dictate a great deal about “operational matters” at school boards.

Even if Bill 101 leaves the trustees with presumptive authority to deal with an issue, the bill lets the school board chair or the unelected Director of Education override the trustees’ decision. Section 25 of Schedule 2 of the bill says this, in the following terms:

“283.0.3 (1) The Minister may make regulations prescribing,

the circumstances in which a resolution or motion passed by an English-language district school board is required to be confirmed by the chair of the board, director of education or any other prescribed board official, and the circumstances in which such confirmation shall not be given;
the rules and procedures for the confirmation of a resolution or motion;
the form and manner of the confirmation of a resolution or motion and the records to be kept of the resolution or motion in the minute books of the board.

If a regulation is made under subsection (1) requiring the confirmation of a resolution or motion passed by an English-language district school board, the board resolution or motion is not effective unless the confirmation has been made in accordance with the regulation.”

Bill 101 Reduces Much-Needed Local Democratic Oversight of Unelected Senior School Board Officials

Even before this bill, and despite the efforts of elected trustees, the unelected senior school board officials had disproportionate power over the education of our children without sufficient local democratic oversight. No matter how well-intentioned those officials may be, this always produces a risk of arbitrary and unfair action.

Bill 101 makes this much worse. We have seen signs of this at some if not all of the eight school boards that are now under provincial supervision. Because the provincial supervisor reports directly to the education minister, there appears to be a risk of a culture of fear among senior staff. If they do anything that might anger or displease the Minister, their job could be in jeopardy. This fear is a predictable result of the fact that at the TDSB and the Ottawa Carleton District School boards, the Minister-appointed Supervisors summarily fired the Directors of Education at those boards. This culture of fear puts student achievement last.

Bill 101 Lacks Proper Safeguards to Limit Sweeping Powers It Gives the Education Minister and Cabinet

As stated above, Bill 101 gives the education minister and Cabinet a vast amount of highly discretionary power. Yet it imposes few if any legislative guardrails limiting or constraining how these sweeping and arbitrary powers are to be used. In large government bureaucracies such power too often risks bad decisions and troubling abuses.

At the same time, this bill is replete with unnecessary and harmful provisions that are designed to insulate Ontario Government officials and some others as much as possible from legal liability in the courts for their actions. This substantially reduces the important checks and balances that the court system provides in a democracy. It is a cruel irony that Bil 101 aggressively protects the power of the Ontario Government to sue others.

Bill 101 Seriously Reduces Assistance to Parents of Students Having Unresolved Problems with School Officials

Targeting the Toronto District School Board, this bill reduces the number of TDSB trustees from 22 to 12. Most of the remaining 12 trustees will each have to be available to help almost twice the number of parents of the over 40,000 TDSB students with disabilities/special education needs than at present.

The trustee position is part-time. That means in effect that there will be substantially less trustee time available to help these families battle the many disability and bureaucratic barriers at Canada’s largest school board. Dozens of parents recounted in painful detail how those barriers hurt their children at the TDSB Special Education Advisory Committee’s April 13, 2026 public forum.

Bill 101 Makes It Less Likely that People Would Want to Run for the Position of Trustee

At his April 13, 2026 news conference, Education Minister Calandra stated that people could run for school trustee in this fall’s elections. Yet at the eight school boards that are now under provincial supervision, they may be elected as trustees but have no role at all to play in the governance of their school board. The board may still be under provincial supervision, with no publicly announced benchmarks or timelines for returning the trustees to office.

Why would anyone invest the time and money to run for an office that is under indefinite provincial suspension? Minister Calandra summarily dismissed concerns about this at his news conference.

Minister Calandra stated that if no one runs for these positions, he can appoint trustees. Of course, he’d select those appointees on a politically partisan basis. One is left wondering if that is his plan. If so, it would just be more of what he has already been doing by other means. At eight school boards, he ousted trustees elected by the public and replaced them with far more powerful provincial supervisors who report directly to him.

Bill 101 Creates Harmful Secrecy Around School Budgets

It is essential for the school board budgeting process to be as public as possible. From this bill, it would seem that the Ford Government thinks that the problems with school board budget processes is that there was just not enough secrecy around them. This bill will drive the budget process further from public scrutiny. At the eight school boards that the education minister now runs, the school board budget process is shrouded in secrecy. The budget process at school boards was much more public before the Ford Government took over those eight boards. It is especially fundamental in a democracy that budgeting decisions over the public’s money be discussed, debated and decided in public.

The education minister’s arguments in favour of this legislation and his attacks on elected trustees over the past months have focused for the large part on school board budgets. He has blasted trustees for passing budgets that have deficits. These chronic deficits are, however, due to provincial underfunding of education.

That the Minister’s attacks are so dubious is proven overwhelmingly by the fact that at TDSB, the Provincial Supervisor has not altered the budget that the trustees passed last spring before they were ousted. It had a projected deficit, to which the Minister objected. TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee was publicly told at its January 12, 2026 meeting by TDSB’s senior budget official that TDSB was still operating under the trustees’ latest budget. This discussion can be found 30 minutes into the video of that meeting. In other words, after many months in office, the provincially appointed Supervisor had not changed the trustees’ budget. Yet that budget was supposedly so problematic that it led the Minister to oust the trustees from office.

The Minister’s Plan for Student Absenteeism Ignores Needs of Students with Disabilities

The education minister received a great deal of public attention with his April 13, 2026 news conference’s announced plan to address student absenteeism. Yet his plan and Bill 101 fail to address critical unmet needs of students with disabilities, for which the Ontario Government is responsible.

Hidden in the Minister’s student absenteeism figures are the absences of some students with disabilities for which the Ford Government is ultimately responsible. We provide two examples.

First, his figures include students with disabilities who have been excluded from school by their principal, using the unfair, arbitrary power given them by section 265(1)(m) of the Education Act. Section 265(1) (m) provides:

“265. (1) It is the duty of a principal of a school…

… (m) subject to an appeal to the Board, to refuse to admit to the school or classroom a person whose presence in the school or classroom would in the principal’s judgment be detrimental to the physical or mental well-being of the pupils; …”

This is different from a school’s power to impose discipline on a student for misconduct, such as suspending or expelling a student from school. Those disciplinary powers are carefully restricted by Ontario’s detailed regime for discipline of students. Section 265(1)(m) of the Education Act does not impose any of those safeguards when a principal refuses to admit a student to school.

Almost six years ago, the AODA Alliance made public its comprehensive July 23, 2020 report on this power. It proves that each principal in Ontario is a law unto themselves when it comes to the right to exclude these students from school. There is a shocking lack of due process or accountability, and policies vary widely from school board to school board.

Reports and surveys by Community Living Ontario, People for Education, and the Ontario Autism Coalition each show that principals are prone to exclude a student with disabilities from school if their educational assistant is away from school. This violates the Ontario Human Rights Code and the board’s duty to accommodate students with disabilities. It shows that these exclusions from school are at least in some cases due to ongoing provincial underfunding of special education.

The Ministry does not require school boards to collect and report data on how often students are excluded from school. The Ontario Government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach allows the Ministry and the Minister to hide behind their own ignorance by design about the magnitude of this problem.

Disability advocates including the AODA Alliance, the Ontario Autism Coalition and others, as well as the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee’s final report all call for provincial standards to govern this issue. The Government has power to do this but has refused for years to act.

The December 4, 2024 AODA Alliance Update reported that we had just learned via the grapevine that the Ministry of Education was considering the possibility of issuing a “Policy and Program Memorandum” to every school board giving directions for the first time that could regulate or limit how this sweeping power is used. The Government had scheduled some sort of a consultation on this. The AODA Alliance was not invited to this consultation, nor did the government tell the AODA Alliance or some key disability advocacy organizations about it.

On December 4, 2024, the AODA Alliance wrote a strong letter to the Ministry of Education officials who appear to be responsible for this consultation. No authoritative response was received. We heard from others that after this was made public, the Ministry postponed that meeting. There has been no public indication that it was ever rescheduled.

A second illustration of how student absenteeism is traceable to chronic provincial underfunding of special education was highlighted at the April 13, 2026 TDSB Special Education Advisory Committee Public Forum for parents of students with disabilities/special education needs. At that forum, some parents reported that their child’s special education needs were not being effectively accommodated at school. In some cases, this caused mental health problems for the child, leading them to be absent from school.

The Minister’s April 13, 2026 announcement and Bill 101 do nothing to address these systemic causes of absenteeism. That problem would be papered over by a new provincial requirement that a student’s absenteeism be held against them when it comes to their grades. Even if the Minister were to exempt students with disabilities from that new grading requirement, this is no solution. Such a policy shifts a burden to these students or their families to take action to get out from under an arbitrary one-size-fits-all provincial approach.

At his April 13, 2026 news conference, the Minister did not demonstrate that he lacks sufficient authority under existing legislation to tackle the student absenteeism issue. He did not enumerate any efforts by him to work collaboratively with school boards to try to solve it. Instead, he now intervenes with a huge unnecessary legislative sledgehammer.

Bill 101 Improperly Targets the Ontario Public School Boards Association, Seemingly Attempting to Silence Criticism of Some Provincial Policies

This bill guts the Ontario Public School Boards Association. That Association has been outspoken in raising concerns about the Ford Government’s recent plans. Abolishing the Association reflects a gradual dimming of the lights in our democratic system at a time when we need those lights brightly shining.

Bill 101 is a Slap in the Face for Parents, Including Parents of Students with Disabilities

In several ways, Bill 101 and the Government’s process for developing and legislating it are a slap in the face for parents. It is especially so for parents of students with disabilities who too often must advocate at their local school board to get their child’s disability-related learning needs accommodated.

The Ford Government’s ousting elected trustees at eight school boards, comprising over one third of the entire school system, has already hurt these parents. They need access to elected trustees as their final resort within the school board to advocate for getting their child’s unmet disability-related needs met. Bill 101, by substantially reducing the powers and role of trustees, can only undermine this important function.

In November 2025, the Ford Government rushed to announce the establishment of a Student and Family Support Office at each school board to fulfil this role. This came after the Ontario Autism Coalition, the AODA Alliance, and Ontario Parents for Education Support held a news conference unveiling their “Better Call Paul” campaign. They urged frustrated parents to take their child’s issue directly to Education Minister Paul Calandra, because he was gradually taking over all these school boards.

Feedback since the opening of Student and Family Support Offices at five provincially supervised school boards shows that they are at best cosmetic window dressing. They are not designed, empowered, or sufficiently staffed to be effective dispute resolvers for these beleaguered parents.

The reduction of the number of trustees at TDSB and the weakening of the mandate of trustees at all boards together weaken parents’ voices. Trustees are a major avenue for parents to voice their concerns. To the extent that senior school board staff feel they don’t have to listen to the trustees, parents and their children will be the ultimate losers.

Making this worse, the Ford Government has systematically shut out parents’ voices from the development of Bill 101. Efforts to reach out our collective hand and to be consulted were in effect swatted away.

Finally, Bill 101’s weighty new red-tape encrusted bureaucracy amplifies and protects the Minister’s voice but does nothing in 75 pages of legislative provisions to give effective voice to parents.

The stifling of parents’ voices, especially for parents of students with disabilities, is demonstrated in a worrisome way at the school boards that the Ford Government is now running via its supervisors. The Minister directed last fall that any school board under such supervision may no longer livestream its Special Education Advisory Committee meetings. This makes it harder to reach parents. Members of these Special Education Advisory Committee are themselves either parents or representatives of parents’ organizations.

Finally, the Government’s rushed timetable for Bill 101 at the Legislature further impedes parents’ voices. The Ford Government used its majority to speed through Second Reading before most could have time to read this bill, rushed public hearings to take place days later, and allows an insufficient one day for public hearings. Most will be shut out of the process.

3. Proposed Amendments to Bill 101

We strongly urge that Bill 101 be withdrawn. The Minister of Education should undertake an open, accessible and inclusive consultation with school boards, parents, trustees (including ousted trustees), students, unions and others, preferably bringing the different stakeholders to a shared table in search for common ground.

However, if the Government does not withdraw the bill, we propose eight amendments.

The public deserves to know what this bill will cost the taxpayer, before it is proclaimed in force. Moreover, there will need to be a great deal of work done by the Minister, the Ministry and school boards before they are ready to engage in the massive work required by the bill’s implementation.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to provide that it does not go into effect (except regarding the duty to enact the promised Education Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) until a date after January 1, 2030, and only once the following two conditions are met:

At least 30 days after the Auditor General has prepared and made public a comprehensive report on the cost of the additional bureaucracy and red tape that Bill 101 creates.
No less than six months after the Minister has made public proposed draft regulations that the Cabinet or the Minister has authority to make and directions or orders to school boards to implement the startup of this bill, so that school boards have time needed to prepare for the bill’s implementation.

Trustees, potential candidates for the office of trustee, voters and school board officials all need to know in clear terms what the powers of the elected trustees will be under Bill 101.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to list in clear and detailed terms the powers of school board trustees. It should give the Minister power by regulation to add to those powers but not to reduce those powers below what the legislation’s list of those powers.

Because the bill shifts responsibility over the construction of new and renovated schools to the Minister, it is essential to ensure that that construction is accessible to students, staff, family members and the public with disabilities. Some wrongly think that the Ontario Building Code now covers this. However, its requirements, and regulations enacted under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act to date, fall far short of what is needed to ensure that new construction is accessible.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to require all new school construction to be disability accessible, beyond the inadequate accessibility requirements of the Ontario Building Code and Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act accessibility standards enacted to date. It should adopt and implement the recommendations for accessible school built-environment design in the January 28, 2022 final report of the Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee.

The public, as well as school boards, educators’ associations, and others should have a chance for input into the myriad of new regulations, orders, directives and guidelines that the Ontario Government can make under the bill.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to require the Minister to consult the public, including parents, teachers and other educators, associations of any of these, and school boards’ Special Education Advisory Committees, when developing any of the regulations, guidelines, orders or directions provided for in Bill 101.

The bill should be amended to require that before the Cabinet or Minister makes or amends any regulation, policy, guideline, direction or order under powers granted or expanded by Bill 101, they must publicly post it in draft form and afford the public 90 days to submit feedback thereon, and that they must consider public feedback received before finalizing the regulation, guideline, order, direction or other measure.

It is vital that any of the regulations, guidelines, directives or orders made under the bill not create or perpetuate any barriers against students with disabilities.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to:

require the Minister/Cabinet to take into account the need to ensure that students with disabilities get the equal benefit of education at a school board whenever they make or amend a regulation, order, direction, or policy under the powers provided or expanded under Bill 101.
require that no regulation, guideline, order, policy or other direction made under this bill may create or perpetuate any disability barriers in a school or school board that may adversely affect any students with disabilities.
require the Minister to issue a public statement when making any such regulation, policy, order or direction that states in specific terms how they took this consideration into account.

It is essential for a clear path and benchmarks to be established for returning the eight school boards under provincial supervision to local democracy. Voters deserve clarity as do trustees and potential candidates long before the fall municipal/school board elections this year.

It is grossly insufficient for the Minister to state, as he did at his April 13, 2026 news conference, that he will restore them when they are on “the right track.” That term is devoid of meaning. It lacks objective and manageable standards.

Moreover, the Minister has been in sole and direct control of those eight school boards now for months. If things are not yet on “the right track,” that would be his responsibility.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to

set clear criteria and benchmarks that the Minister must use for deciding when any of the eight school boards now under provincial supervision is restored to local democratic self-government.
require the restoration of these eight school boards to local democratic self-government by November 15, 2026 unless the Minister orders on a date no later than September 1, 2026 that a school board is to remain under provincial supervision.
prescribe clear grounds that the Minister must use for ordering that a school board remain under provincial supervision after November 15, 2026, supported by concrete factual findings, and requiring the Minister to make a public written statement setting out their findings and reasons for keeping that school board under provincial supervision after that date.
not permit anything in the Act to be construed as limiting the power of any person to apply to the Divisional Court of Ontario for judicial review of a Minister’s order stopping the restoration of local democratic governance of a school board now under provincial supervision.

The Ford Government has had well over four years to study the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee’s final report. School boards as well as students with disabilities and their families should not have to wait any longer for the Government to enact the promised Education Accessibility Standard. School boards should no longer each have to wastefully duplicate efforts as they each try to reinvent the same accessibility wheel.

We therefore recommend that:

The bill should be amended to require that the Government enact an Education Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act by November 1, 2026 taking into account the recommendations it received in 2022 from the Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee.