Parents of Students with Disabilities at TDSB, TCDSB, OCDSB, DPCDSB and TVDSB Should Contact Their Student and Family Support Office to get Help with Disability Barriers at School

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

TikTok @AODAAlliance

 

Parents of Students with Disabilities at TDSB, TCDSB, OCDSB, DPCDSB and TVDSB Should Contact Their Student and Family Support Office to get Help with Disability Barriers at School

 

January 20, 2026

 

New Avenue for Parents to Seek Solutions to Problems at Five Ontario School Boards

 

Many parents of students with disabilities in Ontario schools are frustrated. Their child too often face problems getting school to meet their disability-related learning needs. Getting a large bureaucratic school board to solve their problem can be very difficult.

 

If you have a child with disabilities at any of these five Ontario school boards, and you have difficulty getting their disability-related learning needs accommodated, reach out to your board’s new Student and Family Support Office now: the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board (DPCDSB and Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB). Ask them for help.

 

As of January 19, 2026, four of those boards had publicly posted information on how to contact them. Belatedly, the fifth, TVDSB, did s:

 

TDSB:

Online form: None provided.

Email: SupportOffice@tdsb.on.ca

Phone: 416-397-3100.

 

TCDSB

Online form: https://www.tcdsb.org/page/student-family-support-office

Email: None provided

Phone: 416-397-6222

 

OCDSB

Online form: https://www.ocdsb.ca/about-us/connect-with-ocdsb/responding-to-concerns/student-family-support-office

Email: supportoffice@ocdsb.ca

Phone: 613-596-8223

 

DPCDSB

Online form: https://www.dpcdsb.org/about-us/Student-and-Family-Support-Office

Email: None provided.

Phone: None provided.

 

TVDSB

Online form: https://forms.tvdsb.ca/Student-and-Family-Support-Office

Email: None provided

Phone: Director’s Office: (519) 452-2000 Ext.20222

 

What to Do

 

These five boards were required to make information public by January 19, 2026 on how to contact their school board’s Student and Family Support Office. The Ontario Government expects each Student and Family Support Office to acknowledge inquiries within two business days and to provide a response within five business days. Apart from the five school boards we discuss here, all other Ontario school boards don’t have to open their Student and Family Support Office until September 2026. There is no justification for that delay.

 

Before you contact the Student and Family Support Office, try to raise your problem with your school principal, and if unsuccessful, with your school’s superintendent. If you want to know how to contact your superintendent, ask your school office. If you have not first raised your issue with the teacher, principal and superintendent, the Student and Family Support Office may tell you to contact them, and come back if your problem isn’t solved.

 

Before you contact the Student and Family Support Office, you might wish to organize any documents you’d wish to send. That could include emails you have exchanged with the school where you tried to raise your concern, and reports you have on your child’s disability/special education needs that might help.

 

We have two online captioned videos that can help you. These try to use non-technical plain language:

 

If you would like to see what four of the five school boards posted online about their Student and Family Support Office by the Ford Government’s January 2026 deadline, read the January 19, 2026 AODA Alliance Update.

 

Do not assume that the school board employee with whom you are talking has any expertise in or familiar with the educational needs of students with disabilities/special education needs. Parents of any student can contact their Student and Family Support Office about any problem at all facing their child at school, and not only disability-related problems. In fact, the school board web pages say little if anything about disability issues, and don’t offer disability accommodations to parents with disabilities when dealing with those offices.

 

We have pressed the Ford Government to ensure that there are staff members in each Student and Family Support Office with expertise in disability education issues and problem-solving. So far, we have received no assurances.

 

We encourage you to take notes of any phone calls you have with your school board’s Student and Family Support Office.

 

Let Us Know What Responses You Get from Your School Board’s Student and Family Support Office

 

Please email us at aodafeedback@gmail.com to let us know what response you get when you reach out to your school board’s Student and Family Support Office

  • If you reached out by phone, how long did it take to get through to a human being?
  • If you emailed the Student and Family Support Office, how long was it before you got a any response?
  • How long was it before you got any follow-up from the Student and Family Support Office? Did you receive the follow-up by phone or email or some other way?
  • Did the Student and Family Support Office solve your child’s problem?
  • Did the Student and Family Support Office merely repeat back to you what your principal or superintendent previously told you, or did they actually work on finding a new solution to your problem? In other words, did the Student and Family Support Office take a fresh look at the problem and explore solutions or did they simply repeat what you had earlier heard with no effort to explore options?
  • If you tried to follow up with the Student and Family Support Office, how easy was it to get back in touch with the same person there you previously dealt with? Or did you have to speak with or deal with different people at the Student and Family Support Office each time you made contact on the same issue?
  • For those boards that have an online form to fill out to contact the Student and Family Support Office, how easy was it to fill out the form? Did you experience any disability barriers with the form?
  • Did you need any disability accommodations when dealing with the Student and Family Support Office? Did the Student and Family Support Office accommodate your disability related needs? Did the Student and Family Support Office pro-actively ask if you needed any disability accommodations?

 

We welcome your feedback so we can track how effective these Student and Family Support Offices are. That will help us advocate for any needed improvements, well before the other 67 school boards open the doors of their Student and Family Support Office this September.

 

As a volunteer coalition, we don’t have any capacity to investigate problems you experience, or to advocate for your child. However, we hope our two videos listed above will be helpful.

 

How You Can Help

 

  • Post this Update all over the internet and social media.
  • Share this Update with parents of students with disabilities. Encourage them to call their school board’s Student and Family Support Office if they are at one of the five school boards that the Ford Government is now directly running.
  • Encourage parents who have contacted their Student and Family Support Office to write the AODA Alliance at aodafeedback@gmail.com to let us know what response they got from their Student and Family Support Office.
  • Encourage parents of students with disabilities to watch the two AODA Alliance videos earlier.