The Ford Government’s Ousting Four School Boards’ Elected Trustees Leaves Parents of Students with Disabilities Out in the Cold

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update

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The Ford Government’s Ousting Four School Boards’ Elected Trustees Leaves Parents of Students with Disabilities Out in the Cold

September 1, 2025

On the eve of the new school year, a Toronto Star article, set out below, reported on the harm that the Ford Government created at four school boards when it took control of those boards and ousted their elected trustees. Parents encountering problems with their child’s education always had resort, when all else failed, to seek help from their elected trustee. The trustee could go to bat for them and help them navigate an often-maze-like user-unfriendly school board bureaucracy.

In this report, the Education Minister is quoted as saying, in effect, that nothing has been lost since the trustees did not really do much with these complaints. Let’s look at this from the perspective of hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities and their families. Their parents often have a very difficult time navigating the school system. They desperately need an effective, fast and fair way to get their child’s problem reviewed when the teacher or principal can’t or doesn’t solve it. For years, the Ministry has mandated that school boards implement the “Concerned Parents Protocol.” Under it, parents are to take a problem to the principal, and after that, the school superintendent. If that does not work, they are to take the problem to their elected school trustee. In other words, the last resort, which the Ministry has mandated for years, has now been taken away at four school boards by that same Ministry. In its place, parents can all write the provincially appointed Supervisor who will be running the school board. These Supervisors likely have no experience running a school board. They won’t be able to handle parents’ complaints while also trying to figure out on the fly how to run the board and reform its finances, all with no democratic accountability.

It gets worse. There has been a pressing need for years to create a new, and far more effective process within each school board for parents of students with disabilities to raise concerns. Parents may feel that the school board is not providing a disability support that it agreed to provide. They may believe that the school board has refused to agree to provide a disability support that their child needs. The Ministry’s “Concerned Parents Protocol” is outdated and insufficient.

Over three and a half years ago, the Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee recommended specific reforms in this area. Below we set out an excerpt from the final report of that committee, which was delivered to the Ford Government on January 28, 2022. The Government has enacted nothing to implement any part of that report, including reforms to address this specific area of concern. For the Education Minister to now tell the Toronto Star that the Ministry will watch to ensure that parents’ concerns are addressed (not limited to disability concerns) will provide slim consolation to frustrated, anxious parents.

An additional cruel irony here is that the TDSB has in recent months told its Special Education Advisory Committee that the Concerned Parents Protocol is sufficient, emphasizing in no small part that it includes a chance for parents to bring their concerns to their elected trustees. The Ford Government has now pulled the rug out from that excuse for the TDSB to do more to improve things in this regard for students with disabilities.

TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee presented a detailed recommendation for reform to the TDSB trustees on January 22, 2025. It argued that major reform is needed. We set that out below. TDSB senior staff in effect argued to defend the status quo. At the request of TDSB senior staff, the trustees referred the issue back to TDSB staff. Since then, this proposed reform has not taken place. It would have been open to TDSB’s Special Education Advisory Committee to return to a meeting of the trustees this fall, to complain that staff have not improved the situation. However, the trustees have now been ousted by the Ford Government. All parents of students with disabilities can do is to try to get the Provincial Supervisor to fix this. That, we fear, will be an uphill battle.

How You Can Help

Write a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star. Urge the Star to report on the added harm that the Ford Government is inflicting on students with disabilities by its ousting the elected trustees at four Ontario School boards. Tell the story about disability barriers facing students with disabilities in Ontario schools that you know about. Email the Star at Lettertoed@thestar.ca

Please spread the word about this news report to any parents of students with disabilities you know! Invite them to watch the AODA Alliance video giving tips to parents of students with disabilities on how to advocate for their child’s needs at school.

Urge your member of the Ontario Legislature to get the Minister of Education to fix this festering problem in our school boards. Send them this Toronto Star article and this AODA Alliance Update.

Learn all about the long battle to tear down disability barriers in the education system in which the AODA Alliance has played a role. Visit the AODA Alliance website’s education page.

Check out the AODA Alliance’s online video series on the campaign to make our education system fully accessible for all students with disabilities, and share it with others.

MORE DETAILS

Toronto Star September 1, 2025

Originally posted at https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/a-black-hole-of-nothingness-the-start-of-a-school-year-is-always-chaotic-and/article_d59ef4d3-7b6b-44f2-9f54-8dc3c56fa423.html

A new school year -without trustees

Province’s takeover raises doubts over who will handle parent concerns

Kristin Rushowy Senior Writer

Kids left stranded when the school bus doesn’t arrive. A Grade 12 student can’t get into a class they need to graduate. A family moves to a different neighbourhood and is unsure where to enrol their children.

The new school year starts this week – and with it the hiccups that happen every September.

But this fall, the trustees who typically deal with those issues have been stripped of their powers in a handful of the largest school boards in Ontario, representing about one-third of the province’s two million students.

With government-appointed supervisors now running the show in the Toronto public and Catholic, Ottawa public, Dufferin-Peel Catholic and Thames Valley public school boards, it is unclear how the deluge over the next few weeks will be handled.

“Come September, when hundreds of calls and emails start being directed to a black hole of nothingness, parents will get the true impact of this situation,” said Markus de Domenico, chair of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, one of the five the province took over, citing financial mismanagement.

“Parents’ elected voice has been undemocratically removed over a budget crisis the ministry has created, right across the province,” he said. “I’m hoping and praying – literally – that everything will run well for parents.

“I don’t want to use students and parents as a way to push a cause for my fellow trustees and myself,” he added, “but one can’t expect, with 88,000 students going back to school in 200 schools across just our board alone, that everything’s going to be tickety-boo. It doesn’t work that way.”

With trustees losing access to their emails or cellphones, all concerns are to be stickhandled by the supervisors or senior staffers in each board – and Education Minister Paul Calandra said he’s told boards to ensure parents get help.

The first week of school brings “a lot of challenges, and parents will have questions, and (the supervisors) have to refocus the superintendents on making sure that parent questions are being answered in the exact same way they would have been before,” Calandra said in an interview. “The fact that there might not be a trustee doesn’t matter.”

Trustees, he added, “always redirected their questions to superintendents anyway, and there should be zero tolerance for delay … So we’re going to watch that very carefully over the next number of weeks.”

Calandra said that in meetings with educators over the summer, he was told “there was very little a trustee was independently doing on a parent complaint. They might take the call, but invariably, it goes right to the superintendent to fix or address the issue and then communicate it back through.”

Jennifer Di Francesco, who chairs the Toronto Catholic parent involvement committee, has been urging a meeting with the supervisor and education minister, saying “removing (trustees) without meaningful input from and accountability to families and taxpayers demonstrates a troubling disregard for our election process, public trust and local representation.”

School board administrators “work for the ministry,” she said, adding parents were given an email address to contact, but that’s it.

“They expect one email address to deal with all that? … Without our trustees delegating for us, advocating for us, pushing for things to get done … parents can only do so much.”

This fall, Calandra will also be ushering in Bill 33, legislation that will give the province more control over school boards, including the right to veto new school names or name changes, ensuring more transparency on expenses, and mandating school resource officers in schools where local police forces run such programs.

A revamped kindergarten curriculum, as well as new lessons on the Holodomor, Holocaust and Black history, have been put off for a year, giving teachers more time to prepare.

Calandra said he also heard frustrations from educators who would like further refinements to the curriculum and professional activity days, and that he wants to make sure they have the resources they need in the classroom.

Funding, in particular for special-needs students, was another major concern, and he said he promised to “absolutely look into that.”

A number of boards have struggled financially, saying the $30 billion-plus the province allocates to the education file doesn’t meet their actual costs, and many spend more on special education than allocated. The boards taken over by the province were running deficits or using funds from the sale of buildings or reserves to try to balance their books.

Calandra said the supervisors, who are expected to be in place for the entire school year at the least, are to look at how boards are spending the money they have, and “what parts of their administration are not needed and keeping money out of the classroom?”

He said educators also expressed widespread support “that politics has to leave the classroom” as the province has mandated.

“It is the No. 1 issue that causes division in our schools and divisions between parents and teachers, and it came over to a frustrating level with a lot of teachers and principals, and just reinforced where my head is at,” he said.

Both Martha Hradowy, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, and Karen Brown, the past president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said they will be pressing the government to address working conditions for their members in advance of contract talks that will begin later next year.

“We have been hearing over and over again the rise in violence, the overheated, overcrowded classrooms, the larger class sizes … and the need for more wraparound supports, mental health support for students,” Hradowy told the Star. “Those are all things that the government is going to have to address.”

New Democrat MPP Chandra Pasma (Ottawa West-Nepean), her party’s education critic, said parents began reaching out to her office with questions in June after learning their public school board was also being taken over.

“All of a sudden, they had nowhere to go,” Pasma said, adding her office struggled to find even basic information about who to contact.

Michael Bellmore, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, said the next few weeks will be “filled with phone calls regarding bus routes from concerned parents, maybe there’s work that needs to be done in school – and in those cases, they’re going to have to call the supervisor, who may or may not” assign staff to help out.

“It’s going to be a worrisome time for those parents, because they are not going to have that direct contact, or that advocate,” he added.

Calandra said this fall his ministry will also look to address the teacher shortage, and is working with Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn with an eye to making changes to teacher training at university.

How to improve teacher sick-leave rates, which hit about 20 days annually on average in the Toronto public board alone – a factor contributing to the shortage – will also be examined.

Schools starting this year will also, for the first time, be celebrating Ontario Day on June 1 – or close to it, if it falls on a weekend – as mandated.

A memo to boards from the Education Ministry said “Ontario Day will be an instructional day to provide students with the opportunity to learn about and celebrate key milestones in Ontario’s history and the contributions Ontarians have made to Ontario and Canada’s broader social, economic, political and cultural fabric.”

Trustees will now have to attend all board and committee meetings in person “to promote and enhance accountability, transparency, and public confidence in the education system.”

But for now, Toronto Catholic board chair de Domenico said the supervisors need to ensure the school year gets off to a good start.

Parents will have “I-need-something-fixed-now issues,” he noted, and they won’t be able to count on trustees who know who and where to call to get that done quickly. “I hope things go smoothly.”

Key Excerpts from the January 28, 2022 K-12 Education Standards Development Committee Final Report

The Ministry of Education shall:

61.1 ensure effective processes and resources used for planning for all students with disabilities to ensure that students and parents/caregivers are able to participate effectively in the process.

Timeline: six months

61.2 procure software to be used by school board, for producing accessible IEP, report cards and other like documents. This software will ensure parent and students with disabilities have access to all relevant information in an accessible format.

Timeline: six months

61.3 develop a timely formal process/dispute resolution mechanism for parents/caregivers and students to appeal the contents or implementation of individual education plans, to make necessary changes if required, and to ensure that district school boards follow it.

Timeline: six months

13 consistent with the recommendations for a Ministry of Education policy on student and parent/caregiver engagement, a school board level dispute resolution mechanism is available to parents/caregivers of students with disabilities, and to those students, for concerns related to accommodations, including individual education plans.

The dispute resolution process shall be:

a) fair, independent and impartial
b) respectful
c) non-adversarial
d) timely
e) accessible
f) one where the decision is provided in writing.

Timeline: one year

61.14 after the dispute resolution process is completed, if the family is not satisfied, they have the right to bring their concerns regarding the proposed accommodations, including the individual education plan, to a designated senior official at the school board with authority to approve the requested accommodations, for a further review.

Timeline: immediate

61.15 in cases of dispute, the ministry shall appoint a mediator.

Timeline: six months

61.16 no proposed services, supports or accommodations that the school board is prepared to offer shall be withheld from a student pending a review.

Timeline: immediate

61.17 notify parents and caregivers, who themselves have a disability, that they have a right to have their disability-related needs accommodated in these processes, so that they can fully participate in them. For example, they should be notified that they have a right to receive any information or documents to be used in any such meeting or process in an accessible format.

Timeline: immediate

Single dispute resolution process for all disability needs

Parents/guardians and students face additional barriers in obtaining accommodations to meet the student needs, outside of the previous recommendations. For example, field trips, obtaining assessments, transportation, etc.

This report has identified specific situations where a fair, swift, and user-friendly dispute resolution process should be established within each school board, to address specific contexts where disputes can arise between a student or their parents/guardians on the one hand, and the school or school board on the other.

A single dispute resolution process should be created to deal with any disability-related concerns or objections that the parents/guardians or the student with disabilities wish to raise, whether it is specifically spelled out in this report’s recommendations. The Education Accessibility Standard should create this dispute resolution process, so that each school board does not have to design it independently.

This recommendation is not meant to take away any of the specifics on dispute resolution referred to elsewhere in this report.

Timeline: 6 months

Parents Need a Swift, Fair and Effective Route for Solutions If They Believe Their Child’s Special Education Needs Are Not Being Effectively Accommodated

A submission to the TDSB Board of Trustees on behalf of the TDSB Special Education Advisory Committee by SEAC Chair David Lepofsky

January 22, 2025

Introduction

SEAC shall make a deputation to the TDSB Board at its January 22, 2025 meeting. This submission provides background to that presentation. On January 15, 2025, TDSB SEAC presented this topic to the TDSB Program and School Services Committee.

TDSB has at least 40,000 students with special education needs. TDSB is required to accommodate each of their special education needs, so that they all can fully benefit from TDSB services. This necessarily requires strategies that are individually tailored to the needs of each student with special education needs. TDSB is also required to consult with the student’s parents on this.

Some parents believe that TDSB is not effectively accommodating their child’s special education-related needs. Some believe that TDSB will not agree to provide education support or accommodation that the student’s parents believe is needed. Some believe that TDSB has agreed to provide support or accommodation, e.g. by including it in the student’s Individual Education Plan (IEP), but has not met this commitment. No doubt, trustees periodically get calls from parents seeking their help with such situations.

SEAC members and the associations they represent have received many complaints about such situations. They have brought these concerns forward to SEAC to seek a systemic solution. SEAC does not investigate individual cases, but looks for places where we need system-wide improvements.

At its November 4, 2024, monthly meeting, SEAC, with the assistance of TDSB staff, convened its first-ever town hall meeting for parents of students with special education needs. We considered this event to be a major success, providing a placed where parents could raise concerns with us.

At this town hall, SEAC heard many wrenching stories from parents describing situations where their child’s special education needs were not being met at TDSB. Depending on the circumstances of an individual case, the parent’s belief may be well-founded. When such an issue arises. SEAC has identified as one of the priority areas on which it is now focusing, the need to ensure that these parents have access to a swift, fair, and effective avenue for raising such issues, and for having them properly and quickly resolved, without the need to resort to external legal proceedings such a human rights complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

AT TDSB, parents now have two options. First, they can submit a concern through the procedure set out in the Ministry of Education’s “Concerned Parents Protocol.” Second, they can submit their issue to TDSB’s Human Rights office.

Especially in so large a school board, these avenues have not been a sufficient response. The Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee, established under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, called for school boards to create an additional avenue for parents that is more specialized and tailored to the needs of students with special education needs.

Last June, SEAC received an extensive briefing from TDSB staff, and later held a full discussion of this issue, As a result, at its October 8, 2024 monthly meeting, SEAC passed the motion set out below. Staff had been present as this issue was discussed at earlier SEAC meetings, and at its K-12 Working Group, a SEAC subcommittee.

Staff advised SEAC at its January 13, 2025 meeting that staff have taken no steps as a result of SEAC’s passing the motion set out below. SEAC therefore now brings this important issue to the TDSB Program and School Services Committee. SEAC emphasizes that it is fully open to a school board to develop its own internal process for assisting parents to raise these issues, and for TDSB to attempt to resolve them. Just because the Ministry has prescribed the Concerned Parents Protocol, this does not mean that a school board is handcuffed to offer that procedure, and only that procedure. It also does not mean that that procedure cannot be refined and modernized.

SEAC remains eager to work collaboratively with TDSB’s staff and trustees on this issue. SEAC does not ask trustees to vote at its January 22, 2025 Board meeting to approve or reject the specific proposal set out in this motion. Rather SEAC asks trustees, within their proper role, to recognize that the problem SEAC here identifies is a real one, and that it is a priority that it be addressed.

October 8, 2024 Motion Passed by the TDSB Special Education Advisory Committee

SEAC Motion

At the October 8th, 2024 Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) Meeting, the Committee passed a motion entitled “Creating a Fast, Fair and Effective One-Stop Avenue within TDSB for Parents of Students with Disabilities/Special Education Needs Who Believe TDSB is not Accommodating Their Child’s Learning Needs

SEAC recommends that:

TDSB should establish a prompt, user-friendly, fair and effective process for parents/guardians of students with disabilities/special education needs to seek a resolution if they believe that TDSB is not providing an accommodation for their learning needs that would benefit the student, e.g. if TDSB is not delivering on commitments in the student’s Individual Education Plan or if TDSB has not agreed to provide an accommodation that the parent/guardian believes that the student needs.
Staff at TDSB who receive and address a complaint from a parent/guardian of a student with disabilities/special education needs should:
a) Have expertise and experience with education of students with disabilities/special education needs;
b) Be independent of those TDSB staff who have dealt with the student’s needs in issue;
c) Have expertise and training in effective mediation/alternate dispute resolution and
d) Have authority to direct any corrective action that they decide is needed.
If, after a review, the TDSB decides not to provide the accommodation that the parent/guardian has requested, TDSB shall give written reasons for this decision.
Every effort should be made to mediate and resolve any disagreements between the family and TDSB. If the matter cannot be resolved, there should be an option for TDSB to appoint a person or persons outside TDSB to consider the issue., along short time lines.
This process should be designed and carefully tailored specifically for addressing the needs of students with disabilities/ special education needs. It should not also deal with other students’ complaints that are unrelated to disability/special education needs.
This motion outlines the principles that should guide the needed process, while leaving flexibility on how it will be designed and operated. This process can be designed so as not to conflict with Ministry requirements. A Parent/care-giver, or the student themselves, can first bring their concerns to their teacher, and then the principal, after which this avenue would be available to them if needed.