The “Better Call Paul” Campaign for Underserved Students with Disabilities in Ontario Schools is Getting Great Media Attention

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

 

The “Better Call Paul” Campaign for Underserved Students with Disabilities in Ontario Schools is Getting Great Media Attention

 

November 11, 2025

 

SUMMARY

 

The November 10, 2025 Queen’s Park news conference by the AODA Alliance, the Ontario Autism Coalition, and Ontario Parents for Education Supports has led to fantastic media coverage! Many Ontarians have now heard from us about our new “Better Call Paul” campaign. We’re calling on parents of students with disabilities/special education needs to call Education Minister Paul Calandra to ask him for his direct help if their school is not meeting their child’s disability-related learning needs.

 

  • On November 10, 2025, CTV and CP24 ran a great story which you can watch on YouTube and read below.

 

  • On November 11, 2025, Toronto Today ran a superb article by The Trillium also set out below.

 

  • On November 11, 2025, between 6 and 8 a.m., CBC Radio separately interviewed AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky on seven of its eight morning radio shows around Ontario, aired live or taped for broadcast later in the week. It is hoped that the eighth, Toronto’s Metro Morning, will do the same. An interview was scheduled, but Zoom problems prevented it from happening.

 

  • Spinoff from these recent events led two media outlets to attend the November 10, 2025 Toronto District School Board’s Special Education Advisory Committee meeting for the second month in a row. This comes after Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra banned livestreaming of those meetings in the five school boards that the Ford Government took over.

 

 

How You Can Help

 

 

  • Download, print, and widely distribute our 1-page “Better Call Paul” brochure! It is available at this link. Encourage others to do that too!

 

If your own child is facing disability challenges at school, call Education Minister Paul Calandra! Join the “Better Call Paul” campaign. Ask him to direct your school board to fix your child’s disability barriers and problems.

 

Let us know what you do! Email us at aodafeedback@gmail.com

 

MORE DETAILS

 

CTV News November 10, 2025

 

Originally posted at https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/politics/queens-park/article/better-call-paul-advocates-say-students-with-special-learning-needs-left-behind-by-school-board-takeovers/

‘Better call Paul’: Advocates say students with special learning needs left behind by school board takeovers

By Joshua Freeman

 

(L to R) Liberal MPP Jonathan Tsao appears with advocates for students with special learning needs, Bruce McIntosh, David Lepofsky and Julia Evangelisto at a news conference at Queen’s Park Monday November 10, 2025. (Joshua Freeman /CP24)

 

Parents of students with disabilities are warning that the removal of school board trustees is making it even more difficult to advocate for students with special learning needs within the public school system.

 

Back in June, Education Minister Paul Calandra seized control of four school boards, including the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and appointed supervisors to address alleged financial mismanagement.

 

Speaking at Queen’s Park Monday, a group of parents of students with special learning needs said the change has made it more difficult to get help for kids when there are problems.

 

“For years now, parents of students with disabilities have been stuck in the middle of conflicting messages,” said Julia Evangelisto, co-founder of Ontario Parents for Education Support.

 

“School boards say the province isn’t giving enough money to meet the needs of students with disabilities. The province says boards are getting more than ever, and families like ours, we’re standing in the crossfire, forced to fight for our kids’ basic rights – an education that meets their needs – while schools are left trying to fill the gaps they were never built to handle.”

 

Bruce McIntosh, a board member and founding president of the Ontario Autism Coalition, said trustees have frequently been called on to help address problems where students with special needs have fallen through the cracks.

 

“The minister is now in a position of micromanaging school boards, and he has far more authority to direct action in schools than elected trustees ever had,” McIntosh said.

 

Saying Calandra has now become “Ontario’s uber trustee” for all the boards under supervision, McIntosh said the advocates have started a new campaign telling anyone with a suspended trustee “you better call Paul,” a play on the Breaking Bad spinoff about a wheeling and dealing lawyer.

 

“Now we call on parents of students with disabilities who need help for their child at school to call or email Ontario’s super trustee Education Minister Paul Calandra,” McIntosh said. “You better call Paul. Tell him how your school is not meeting your child’s disability related learning needs. Tell him what to order your school board to do to fix this. Better call Paul.”

 

PC MPP Paul Calandra speaks during Question Period at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Tuesday, May 13, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston

 

In a statement, Calandra’s office insisted the changes are in fact about improving the system and said the province has increased special education funding by 36 per cent over the past seven years and has hired more than 4,000 additional education assistants since 2018.

 

“The decision to place school boards under supervision was not only about financial mismanagement, but about restoring accountability and trust in the system. Trustees repeatedly failed to listen to parents and communities, focusing on their own interests instead of student success, as seen in the flawed TDSB lottery and the Elementary Review Program at the OCDSB,” the statement read.

 

“We will continue to put parents and students at the center of the education system to ensure resources go directly into classrooms to help students succeed and make it easier for parents to get clear answers and support.”

 

But the group said the issue of resources is separate from representation.

 

Evangelisto said there is no one within the school system tasked with advocating for students with special learning needs. Without trustees, she said, there is nobody parents can turn to, to intervene when there are problems that can’t be resolved with frontline school staff.

 

“Within the structure of the school boards, parents take that on themselves and build community around each other,” she said. “That’s how the Ontario Autism Coalition came about. That’s how my group, Ontario Parents For Education Support, came about. We are on islands all by ourselves, trying to navigate this system in a storm around us, and we don’t know where we’re going.”

 

David Lepofsky, who chairs the TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee, said the TDSB serves 40,000 students with disabilities and special education needs.

 

“That’s more kids than some school boards have in total,” he said. “That is an incredible, incredible opportunity for the rest of Ontario to learn what they might be in for if there are no longer any elected trustees to provide public, independent oversight of what the education bureaucracy is doing with their kids and with our tax money.”

 

He said the TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee has provided important feedback to school board officials via “lively, fulsome, frankly intelligent and thoughtful discussions with staff.”

 

“We don’t always agree, but we put our advice forward, and then we could take it to the trustees.”

 

He cited a recent decision by the ministry to ban school boards from live-streaming meetings as evidence that they simply want to stifle dissent.

 

“You (historically) can go to a meeting of the entire board of trustees and make a delegation in public, often monitored by the media and live streamed, and you could then take that video and use it to try to advocate publicly to make things better. All gone.”

 

Toronto Today November 11, 2025

 

Originally posted at https://www.torontotoday.ca/local/education/better-call-paul-calandra-advocates-families-kids-with-disabilities-struggling-school-11471607

 

‘Better call Paul,’ advocates tell families struggling with school supports for kids with disabilities

Three advocacy groups launched a joint campaign on Monday, encouraging families to reach out to the education minister about any special education concerns in the absence of trustees at several boards under provincial supervision

Sneh Duggal    Sneh Duggal

special-ed-advocates2-nov10

From left, Liberal MPP Jonathan Tsao, Ontario Autism Coalition board member, Bruce McIntosh, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky and Julia Evangelisto co-founder of Ontario Parents for Education Support speak at Queen’s Park Nov. 10.Steve Cornwell/The Trillium

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.

 

If children with disabilities are excluded from school or need supports they aren’t receiving, families “better call Paul.”

 

That’s the message advocates shared at Queen’s Park Monday, referring to Education Minister Paul Calandra — and the “Breaking Bad” prequel “Better Call Saul.”

 

“We call on any parents of students with disabilities who need help for their child at school to call or email Ontario’s ‘super-trustee,’ Education Minister Paul Calandra. Better call Paul. Tell him how your school is not meeting your child’s disability-related learning needs! Tell him what to order your school board to do to fix this,” said Bruce McIntosh, a board member and founding president of the Ontario Autism Coalition (OAC).

 

The OAC was one of three groups that came together to launch the campaign, which features a brochure with Calandra’s photo and ministerial phone number and email. It says “Need a trustee? ‘Better call Paul'” at the top and then goes on to include several paragraphs about the province taking control of five school boards, appointing supervisors to each of them and effectively sidelining trustees in the process.

 

The brochure then warns that “this could be the new normal” if the province decides to eliminate trustee roles altogether.

 

Since this spring, the minister has taken control of five school boards — 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.

 

Calandra has also said that the school board “governance model is going to change” and that he’s “very seriously looking at the elimination of school trustees.”

 

Parents and advocates have been criticizing the school board takeovers, saying that trustees have often been the only ones parents can turn to for support and that they aren’t hearing back from the government-appointed supervisors, despite reaching out about concerns they have.

 

The OAC noted that according to its recent survey of special education families, 28.4 per cent of more than 650 respondents said they had turned to their trustee for help during the 2024-25 school year.

 

McIntosh said that without trustees, school board bureaucrats have “become an unaccountable law unto themselves.”

 

“There’s really only one elected politician left for these anxious parents to turn to for help. That is Minister of Education Paul Calandra,” McIntosh said, going on to list several scenarios for which he recommended families reach out to the minister for help.

 

“Has your school told your child they cannot come to school at all, or can only stay for part of the school day? Better Call Paul. Have you asked for your child to have a special needs assistant to make sure they are safe throughout the school day, but the school said no because they don’t have enough staff? Better

call Paul. Did you find out to your horror that the school put your child in a padded isolation room without your consent, and without staff monitoring their safety? Better call Paul,” he said.

 

David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, echoed this, saying families had the ability to appeal to trustees if a school refused to let a student attend, but now “what is left, for practical purposes, is the tyranny of the senior school board bureaucrats.”

 

“The only public forum left to air serious concerns about the school board’s provisions for students with disabilities/special education needs is each board’s Special Education Advisory Committee,” said Lepofsky, who is chair of the TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee.

 

But the education minister’s recent direction to supervised school boards to stop livestreaming committee meetings has made it “much harder for parents to keep up with what we are advocating for on their behalf.”

 

He said this also “weakens” the voice of families of children with disabilities or special education needs.

 

Parents and advocates connected to the OAC have taken matters into their own hands and are livestreaming some committee meetings at school boards.

 

McIntosh plans to attend and livestream Monday night’s meeting of the TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee, with another parent doing the same last week for the meeting at the OCDSB.

 

A spokesperson for Calandra said in a statement Friday that the supervisors’ number one priority is to “enhance student success where trustees have failed.”

 

“Minister Calandra made this decision to ensure meetings remain professional, productive, and focused on student achievement, while continuing to be open to the public with hybrid participation and full transparency through posted agendas, minutes, and decisions,” said Emma Testani.

 

Julia Evangelisto, co-founder of Ontario Parents for Education Support, said that when families “hit a wall, they should be able to call an elected official who can cut through the confusion and get real answers.”

 

“Our kids don’t get do-overs. Every year matters. We’re speaking here today to make sure the voices of parents are finally heard.”

 

Calandra’s spokesperson said on Monday following the press conference that the government has boosted special education funding by more than 36 per cent, adding more than $1 billion and supporting the hiring of more than 4,000 education assistants.

 

“The decision to place school boards under supervision was not only about financial mismanagement, but about restoring accountability and trust in the system. Trustees repeatedly failed to listen to parents and communities, focusing on their own interests instead of student success, as seen in the flawed TDSB lottery and the Elementary Review Program at the OCDSB,” Testani said.

 

“We will continue to put parents and students at the centre of the education system to ensure resources go directly into classrooms to help students succeed and make it easier for parents to get clear answers and support.”