AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s Monthly Column in the Toronto Star’s Metroland Publications Calls on All School Boards to Host a Public Forum for Parents of Students with Disabilities

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

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AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s Monthly Column in the Toronto Star’s Metroland Publications Calls on All School Boards to Host a Public Forum for Parents of Students with Disabilities

 

February 18, 2026

 

SUMMARY

 

 

AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s latest monthly column in the Toronto Star’s 25 Metroland publications around Ontario addresses the critical need for families of one third of a million students with disabilities in Ontario’s K-12 schools to have a meaningful voice in the treatment of these too-often vulnerable students in our schools. Read it at the end of this Update.

 

This new column urges each of Ontario school boards’ Special Education Advisory Committee to hold a public forum for parents to describe the disability barriers their children face at school, and how to remove and prevent these barriers. As we reported in the February 10, 2026 AODA Alliance Update, the Toronto District School Board’s Special Education Advisory Committee is holding just such a public forum on April 13, 2026 in Toronto. That SEAC, which is chaired by David Lepofsky (who also chairs the AODA Alliance) has offered to help any other school board’s SEAC that wants to organize a parents’ public forum.

 

How You Can Help

 

  • Please circulate this new column to your family, friends and complete strangers. It is especially helpful to share it with families of students with disabilities.

 

  • If you are a member of a school board’s Special Education Advisory Committee, share this column with your fellow SEAC members. Propose to your SEAC that it hold an open meeting to listen to parents’ voices.

 

  • Check out the AODA Alliance’s online video that offers practical tips to members of a school board’s Special Education Advisory Committee and members

 

 

 

  • Learn about the AODA Alliance’s advocacy to improve education for students with disabilities by visiting the AODA Alliance Website’s education page.

 

 

MORE DETAILS

 

Inside Halton February 18, 2026

 

Originally posted at: https://www.insidehalton.com/life/students-with-disabilities-deserve-voice/article_c69875f5-4b06-5007-aaf1-f0f5d9a46e5e.html

 

Parents of students with disabilities deserve a voice, Ontario advocate urges school boards

 

Disabilities barriers and chronic underfunding handcuff teachers, David Lepofsky writes.

 

By David Lepofsky

David Lepofsky is chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.

 

It’s crept up on us. The province has gradually seized control of seven school boards — more than a third of K-12 students in publicly funded schools.

The public had no say in this.

This is especially worrisome for more than 120,000 students with disabilities. They are among Ontario’s most underserved, vulnerable students.

For years, schools too often did a poor job of letting parents of students with disabilities know what programs and services are available for their children and how to access them.

Schools’ learning technology too often lacks digital accessibility. The education system is full of rigid bureaucratic barriers that make it harder for schools to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

What a nightmare for overloaded parents trying to advocate for their kids.

Despite this, some students with disabilities succeed in our schools, but not enough.

Front-line teaching staff want to teach all learners. They are handcuffed by two provincial failings.

First, the education system is replete with disability barriers that the province perpetuates. Second, the province chronically underfunds supports for students with disabilities.

Doug Ford and Paul Calandra, education minister, have blamed everything on local school boards and trustees. But now that one third of students are under provincial control, they can only blame themselves.

Things are getting worse for students with disabilities. For example, the Toronto District School Board’s supervisor raised the maximum permissible size of two categories of special education classes, and the maximum permissible size of a Grade 4 to Grade 8 class. Both increases hurt students with disabilities.

While elected trustees met in public and routinely welcomed parents’ public presentations about concerns, the TDSB supervisor does his work behind closed doors.

He has yet to attend any of the monthly meetings of the Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC), which I chair, to hear from representatives of parents of students with disabilities.

In contrast, we always had some trustees at our meetings.

The province summarily fired the education directors at the Toronto and Ottawa boards. Is it possible senior board staff now live in fear, lest they be next?

What can we all do?

Here’s a first step. Each of Ontario’s 72 school boards has a SEAC. It should each devote an entire monthly meeting to having parents of students with disabilities speak to them — a public forum for parents.

Invite parents to describe barriers their child faces at school and what should be done to fix them.

That’s what TDSB’s SEAC is doing on April 13. The committee successfully held such a meeting in November 2024, during which parents recounted wrenching stories, crying out for provincial action.

We’d be happy to help any school board that wants tips on how to hold a parents’ forum to hear the too-often marginalized voice of parents of students with disabilities.

 

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.