AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
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AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s Latest Column in the Toronto Star’s Metroland Publications Urges Parents of Students with Disabilities to Ask Their School Board’s Student and Family Support Office to Ensure Their Child’s Disability is Accommodated at School
February 4, 2026
SUMMARY
We bring you AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s January 2026 column in the Toronto Star’s Metroland publications around Ontario. It got published now, in early February. Either way, we hope you like it. It emphasizes the challenges that parents of students with disabilities/special education needs will face using the new school board Student and Family Support Office opened at the five boards that the Ford Government seized control of last June.
How You Can Help
- Share this guest column with any parents of students with disabilities/special education needs you know.
- Encourage schools to circulate it.
- Write a letter to the editor of the Metroland papers. Commend Metroland for providing this column. Write them at thenewsroom@metroland.com
- Join the Better Call Paul Campaign. Phone or email Education Minister Paul Calandra, and ask him to intervene to fix the problems facing your child with disabilities in an Ontario school. Phone: 416 325-2600 Email: edu@ontario.ca
- Download and distribute our 1-page Better Call Paul brochure at this link.
MORE DETAILS
Inside Halton February 4, 2026
Originally posted at https://www.insidehalton.com/life/province-takes-over-school-boards/article_03c629d4-2679-513e-b20d-e6c0f50d18fd.html
Will Ontario’s New Office For Student Problems Help Those With Disabilities Or Add More Bureaucracy?
David Lepofsky
David Lepofsky is chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.
Far too many of 350,000 Ontario students with disabilities face vexing disability barriers impeding them from equally benefitting from education at school.
The province mandated an avenue for families of any students in K-12 schools to solve their child’s problems at school — a Student and Family Support Office. We urge parents to utilize it at the five school boards where it is available. Contact information is on those board websites. In September, other Ontario boards must offer this.
I fear this could be smoke and mirrors.
Last June, Education Minister Paul Calandra seized five school boards — including Toronto, and Ottawa-Carleton — dismissing elected trustees and appointing supervisors who report to him. Since then, he’s taken over the Near North, Peel District and York Catholic boards.
Last November, disability advocates held a news conference criticizing the ousting of trustees. Advocates had argued trustees were the final recourse for families seeking disability accommodations, prompting the ministry to create a new avenue for dispute resolution.
Just days later, Calandra ordered all boards to establish a student and family support office.
Calandra ordered a swift timeline to respond to complaints but provided no new funding for these offices. Remember, Ford seized boards like Toronto’s because they had budget deficits. With no new provincial funding, Calandra’s orders could swell those deficits.
It’s unclear if these offices have the authority needed to fix students’ problems. Making this worse, we fear these offices lack enough staff. TDSB reportedly only has two staff to answer calls, yet TDSB has 250,000 students and at least 40,000 have disabilities.
Utterly missing in Calandra’s announcement were measures needed for vulnerable students with disabilities. The province hasn’t enacted any of the 2022 recommendations from the government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee. I was on that committee.
TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC), which I chair, gave TDSB recommendations about what this office needs to include. None were implemented.
Student and Family Support Offices are not a replacement for elected trustees. All families, especially those with students with disabilities, need both.
The law requires these new offices to effectively accommodate disability-related needs of parents with disabilities who contact them for help. Yet their websites haven’t offered this.
Also missing was an assurance that office staff have expertise in teaching students with disabilities. We’re wondering if these offices proactively solve problems, or simply repeat to the parents the reasons already given by the school for not solving their problem. It would be great if staff seek new solutions. If they are another layer of bureaucracy defending the status quo, they will harmfully add to parents’ frustration.
To be transparent, boards should make public how many requests for help pertained to students with disabilities, what the essence of the complaints were, without using anyone’s names, how many were about understaffing, and what percentage were solved.
These offices can get complaints from any family about any issue — serious disability concerns or a parent objecting that their child didn’t make the volleyball team. The needs of students with disabilities risk being lost in the shuffle.
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance created tips for parents wanting to contact their support office. It is asking parents to send feedback to aodafeedback@gmail.com.
David Lepofsky is a retired lawyer who chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance and the Toronto District School Boards Special Education Advisory Committee. He is a visiting professor of disability rights at the law schools at Western, Queen’s and the University of Ottawa, and hosts a podcast: Disability Rights and Wrongs – The David Lepodcast.