AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Ford Government Now Directly Runs Schools Serving Over One Third of Ontario’s K-12 Students, but will Anything At Last Improve for 125,000 Students with Disabilities?
January 29, 2026 Toronto: Since the Ford Government seized control of the Peel District School Board yesterday, there are now as many as 700,000 students in Ontario-funded schools under the direct management of the Ford Government, without any locally elected trustees. That’s over one third of all students in Ontario-funded K-12 schools. Chat GPT estimated that of these, around 125,000 students with disabilities/special education needs are in schools that the Ford Government directly manages.
At a Queen’s Park news conference yesterday (held before the Ford Government seized the Peel District School Board), the AODA Alliance, the Ontario Autism Coalition and Ontario Parents for Education Support revealed how things have been getting worse, not better for students with disabilities in Ontario schools, and especially those that the Ford Government now supervises. The recording of that news conference is now archived online. The January 28, 2026 news release issued by the AODA Alliance, the Ontario Autism Coalition and Ontario Parents for Education Support details key points made at that news conference.
“With the Ford Government now running schools serving one third of Ontario’s K-12 students including 125,000 students with disabilities, we want to see whether Education Minister Calandra will at last start to do something to improve things for so many underserved and vulnerable students with a physical, mental health, learning, sensory, neurological, intellectual or other disability,” said AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, who was one of the speaker’s at yesterday’s news conference. “Four years ago yesterday, the Ford Government received a comprehensive blueprint of what needs to be done, but they’ve enacted absolutely none of the recommendations of the expert committee that the Government appointed for that purpose.”
It increasingly appears that the Ford Government is conducting a creeping seizure of the entire Ontario school system, one board at a time. At yesterday’s news conference, the Government was called on to give organized parents of students with disabilities a seat at the table, if there is indeed any table, where it is deciding how the school system will be governed in the future.
For one third of Ontario’s students including one third of students with disabilities, the Ford Government now must itself confront its chronic underfunding of education for students with disabilities. It can no longer try to blame those boards’ elected trustees.
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
For More Background
The January 28, 2022 final report of the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee.
A video explaining the K-12 Education Standards Development Committees final report and its blueprint for an accessible school system for students with disabilities.
The history of the AODA Alliance’s advocacy to tear down disability barriers in Ontario schools is documented on the AODA Alliance website’s education page
.