Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
Website: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance
AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s Latest Metroland Column: Students with Disabilities in Ontario’s Publicly Funded Schools Deserve Much Better
October 2, 2024
SUMMARY
In AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s latest disability issues column on the Toronto Star’s 25 Metroland websites, the focus is on the many unfair barriers that students with disabilities still must confront in Ontario-funded K-12 schools. Read that column below. The AODA Alliance has been active for a decade and a half pressing to get the Ontario Government to enact a strong Education Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act to tear down those unfair barriers.
How You Can Help
- Share this Metroland column with others, and encourage them to read it.
- Contact your member of the Ontario Legislature. Tell them to press Premier Doug Ford to at long last enact a strong Education Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act to tear down the disability barriers in K-12 Schools. Send them the AODA Alliance’s captioned video that gives the roadmap for making Ontario K-12 schools fully accessible to all students with disabilities.
- Send a letter to the editor to the Metroland group of papers. Give your feedback on this column. We invite you to give positive feedback on Metroland agreeing to run a monthly column by AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky on disability issues. Go to the Metroland web page to submit a letter to the editor.
- Send your school board’s elected trustees the AODA Alliance’s captioned video that identifies priority actions they need to take now to tear down disability barriers in Ontario K-12 schools.
For More Background
- The final report of the Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee, which the Ford Government received on January 28, 2022.
The AODA Alliance’s captioned video giving parents of students with disabilities practical tips on how to advocate at school for their child’s disability-related needs.
- The AODA Alliance website’s education page, which documents the grassroots campaign since 2009 to get the Ontario Government to enact the much-needed Education Accessibility Standard to make Ontario’s education system accessible to and barrier-free for hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities.
MORE DETAILS
Metroland Toronto.com October 1, 2024
Originally posted at https://www.toronto.com/opinion/contributed/students-with-disabilities-in-ontario-s-publicly-funded-schools-deserve-much-better/article_709acdd7-1e13-59df-a45e-f009bb65c1ce.html
Opinion
Students with disabilities in Ontario’s publicly funded schools deserve much better
Far too few students with disabilities are meeting their learning potential, writes David Lepofsky
BY DAVID LEPOFSKY
David Lepofsky is a retired lawyer who chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.
This fall two million students headed back to publicly funded K-12 schools. At least 330,000 of those students have disabilities. This is not a tiny minority. Yet our entire school system, sadly, too often treats them as a second-class afterthought. Teachers, principals and other education staff want all kids to learn and succeed in school, but our outdated system is decades out of date when it comes to effectively educating students with disabilities.
The Ontario government funds, oversees and regulates the school system. It has largely been asleep at the switch. I’m not saying that none of these students with disabilities are learning anything, or that school boards or the province are doing nothing. The problem is that far too few students with disabilities are meeting their learning potential.
Parents of students with disabilities must cope with a highly stressful, if not impenetrable, educational bureaucracy. School boards proclaim that they view parents as partners. Yet far too often, parents of students with disabilities are not treated as partners at all.
What barriers can students with disabilities suffer from at school? School buildings, playgrounds and gym equipment are too often designed only for people without disabilities. Digital classroom equipment and learning software too often lacks readily available features that enable students with disabilities to use them.
Too many classroom teachers lack the training they need to effectively teach all learners.
And then there are antiquated, bureaucratic procedures for parents to seek accommodations for students with disabilities. These would make your head spin. It can be a demoralizing ordeal for a parent to just try to find out what options and supports are available at the school board to assist their child who has a disability, much less to find out where to go to advocate for those supports.
Among the most horrific results is the death of Landyn Ferris, a Trenton high school student with a rare form of epilepsy whose body was found in a “sensory room” at the end of the school day, cold and unresponsive. How could this happen in 2024?
No one working in this system means ill for these kids or their parents. They are locked into an outdated system that often handcuffs them.
In January 2022, the province received a detailed, practical roadmap out of this by a committee of independent, government-appointed experts equally drawn from the disability community and school boards. I was honoured to be part of that advisory committee. Sadly, the province has sat on that report for more than two-and-a-half years.
Students with disabilities and their families suffer as a result. Lots of improvements can be made at little or no cost.
Don’t be distracted when school boards and the province start finger-pointing over who is to blame or quoting how much money they spend on special education. There’s enough blame to go around.
Do you think students with disabilities deserve better? Let the Ontario government know it must set strong provincial requirements that school boards must meet to effectively serve students with disabilities.
People with disabilities already face excessively high unemployment rates. It’s hard to get a good job without a good education. Let’s get rid of the many unfair disability barriers in Ontario schools, so we can give students with disabilities a fair crack at future jobs.
David Lepofsky is a retired lawyer who chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance and is a visiting professor of disability rights at the law schools at Western and the University of Ottawa.