Whether There Will Be a Better Future for Students with Disabilities in Ontario is on the Ballot in this Election, Disability Advocates Insist

ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE

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Whether There Will Be a Better Future for Students with Disabilities in Ontario is on the Ballot in this Election, Disability Advocates Insist

January 29, 2025 Toronto: With the Ontario election campaign underway, disability advocates announce that on the ballot in this election will be whether there will be a better future for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable and underserved students with disabilities in Ontario’s education system. The grassroots non-partisan AODA Alliance is asking all parties to commit to a new Accessible Ontario Pledge. Among other things, it includes timelines for tearing down the many disability barriers in Ontario’s education system.

 

The AODA Alliance aims to get all Ontario parties to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge. This was made public at a widely watched January 6, 2025, Queen’s Park news conference that can be viewed online.

 

“At least two third of a million Ontario voters have children with disabilities who face far too many barriers in Ontario’s education system. We’re looking to the political parties to commit to fix this,” said David Lepofsky, chair of the non-partisan AODA Alliance which has campaigned since 2009 for a barrier-free school system for at least 350,000 Ontario students with disabilities. “Too many of their kids have been excluded from school or allowed to attend only for shortened school days. Too many parents find it brutally hard just to find out what services, supports and placements are available for their child at school, and how to navigate a bewildering education bureaucracy.”

 

Last week, at another Queen’s Park news conference, one convened by the relentless Ontario, Autism Coalition, a damning report was released documenting how many students with disabilities are underserved by Ontario’s education system. One Education Minister after the next boasts that Ontario is “spending more than ever on them”, rings hollow in the experience of voters whose children suffer from these barriers and under-funding.

 

A blistering news report earlier this week in the online Toronto Today news publication, set out below, describes the frustrating resistance that school boards can mount when parents of students with disabilities simply ask a school board to create, even on an trial basis, a prompt, user-friendly, fair and effective process for parents to use when they are unsatisfied with how a school is meeting their child’s disability-related learning needs. Parents should not have to separately battle uphill at 72 school boards across Ontario to get such basic safeguards. A provincially enacted Education Accessibility Standard enacted under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act could solve this, once and for all, but Ontario still has none.

 

Last November, the Toronto District School Board’s Special Education Advisory Committee held a Town Hall to hear from parents of students with disabilities/special education needs about barriers their children face at school. Trying to hold back their tears, parent after parent gave wrenching accounts of problems their children faced.

 

All political parties have the benefit of a comprehensive and realistic roadmap on how to tear down disability barriers in Ontario’s education system. It was delivered to the Ontario Government three years ago, this week, by the Government-appointed expert panel on the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee. It was the most thorough investigation of how Ontario’s education system serves students with disabilities in our lifetime.

 

“In past campaigns, too many pundits, political commentators and news editors reduced each election into two or three issues. This has systemically excluded a number of serious issues that concern Ontarians, such as issues that affect over 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities,” said Lepofsky. “In this election, we need them to spend more time on a wider range of issues that matter to voters, and less time on daily reporting on polls and horse-races. Children with disabilities in Ontario deserve it.”

 

Contact: AODA Alliance Chair, David Lepofsky

Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com

Twitter: @aodaalliance

 

For background, check out:

  • The final report of the Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee, which the Ford Government received on January 28, 2022.
  • The AODA Alliance website’s education page, which documents the grass roots campaign since 2009 to get the Ontario Government to enact the much-needed Education Accessibility Standard to make Ontario’s education system accessible to and barrier-free for hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities.
  • The Accessible Ontario Pledge and the January 6, 2025 AODA Alliance Queen’s park news conference where it was unveiled.

 

Toronto Today January 27, 2025

 

Originally posted at https://www.torontotoday.ca/local/education/parents-autistic-kids-demanded-new-path-dispute-disability-accommodations-tdsb-said-no-10139136

 

Parents of autistic kids demanded a new path to dispute classroom accommodations. The TDSB said no.

 

‘In a school board as big as the TDSB, you could and should have a phone line people can call,’ says David Lepofsky, chair of the TDSB’s special education advisory committee

 

Gabe Oatley

 

Parents of autistic children are frustrated by a Toronto District School Board (TDSB) decision not to explore creating an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for parents unsatisfied by the classroom accommodations their children have been offered.

 

“It’s insulting,” said parent Melissa Rojas Montoya. “It makes me really consider, what am I going to do in September?”

 

At issue is a motion, passed unanimously by TDSB trustees last week that asked school board staff to consider establishing a “prompt, user-friendly, fair and effective” process for parents to use when they are unsatisfied with how a school is accommodating a disabled student.

 

TDSB schools work with the families of students with autism and other disabilities to develop individual education plans and other accommodations.

 

Currently, parents unsatisfied with the plans provided to their children must follow the same complaint process as those upset by the fact their kid didn’t make a sports team, said David Lepofsky.

 

“The recourse needs to be to a person with dedicated expertise in educating kids with special education needs,” said the chair of the TDSB’s special education advisory committee, which drafted the initial motion on the matter.

 

“In a school board as big as the TDSB, you could and should have a phone line people can call,” he said.

 

Lepofsky told TorontoToday this work is urgent, noting many parents of the 40,000 disabled students the TDSB serves are unsatisfied by the support their kids are receiving.

 

Yet despite the unanimous approval for the motion, the TDSB told TorontoToday in an emailed statement on Jan. 24 that a new approach to dispute resolution won’t be considered.

 

“The TDSB has existing pathways that are legislated by the Ministry and Board for addressing concerns related to accommodations, and will continue to follow these mechanisms,” said spokesperson Emma Moynihan.

 

One parent’s struggle

 

Toronto parent Rob Gillezeau told TorontoToday the board’s decision is disappointing. He believes a new dispute pathway could help others to avoid the difficulty he faced last summer in trying to secure support for his daughter, Martha, who is autistic.

 

To help kids with extremely complex needs, the TDSB operates a number of so-called diagnostic kindergarten programs, which have a lower student to teacher ratio.

 

Recognizing Martha might be a candidate, Gillezeau contacted her local school last spring to discuss the possibility. In doing so, the Toronto dad learned that to be eligible for such a placement, Martha’s case would need to be discussed by the board’s special education program recommendation committee (SEPRC).

 

Throughout the spring and summer, Gillezeau emailed and called Martha’s school in the Annex, asking to arrange a committee meeting.

 

Months and months went by, however, he said, with no success.

 

At first, school staff told Gillezeau not to worry, he said. But then, as the summer progressed, staff told him that a committee date was unlikely to be scheduled because there was now too little time left before the school year.

 

The news was extremely distressing, said Gillezeau.

 

The major concern was that if Martha began school in a regular classroom, she would no longer be eligible for a SEPRC hearing and would have to be assessed through the individual education plan pathway, which could take months, he said.

 

This was a daunting prospect, the father added, because the school had made it clear they did not have the educational assistant resources to support Martha’s learning in the classroom and could not ensure she wouldn’t escape from the school.

 

Gillezeau said Martha is enormously analytically skilled. Like many other autistic children, however, she sometimes tries to run away from school or other environments. The Annex junior school’s playground is not fenced in, which meant educators could not provide assurance they’d be able to keep her safe, Gillezeau said.

 

Increasingly desperate as September approached, Gillezeau and his partner made the difficult decision to keep Martha out of school, unwilling to sacrifice her safety. As days ticked by in September, the parents tried to get action, contacting local politicians and advocacy groups, while they managed Martha’s childcare by relying on family.

 

One maneuver got action.

 

One week after Gillezeau informed the school principal he was exploring the possibility of filing a human rights complaint, the committee meeting he had been working to schedule for months was in the books.

 

“It p—es me off,” said Gillezeau. “This is a horrendous way to run the system.”

 

20250127-lepofsky

 

David Lepofsky, chair of the TDSB’s special education advisory committee, speaks at a meeting of the board’s program and school services committee in Toronto, Ont. on Jan. 15 as Etobicoke

 

Centre trustee Dan MacLean looks on. Gabe Oatley/TorontoToday

 

Benefits of an alternative dispute resolution pathway

 

The Toronto dad said he believes an alternative pathway to dispute the delay he was facing would have saved time and frustration.

 

“You get to better outcomes when you humanize the process,” he said.

 

 

While ultimately, Gillezeau said that Martha was provided with a spot in a diagnostic classroom in early October, he said it should not have taken the threat of a human rights complaint to secure the meeting.

 

Asked why the committee meeting took so long to schedule, Moynihan said the board does not comment on individual cases due to privacy.

 

Is the TDSB ‘gaslighting’ parents?

 

Leo Lagnado, a member of TDSB’s special education advisory committee, said Gillezeau’s experience is not isolated. He said the school board uses delays and minimizes student accommodation requirements as a strategy to reduce pressure on the insufficient resources it has available.

 

“[If] you don’t have spots for all the kids that need it, you have to artificially constrain the demand,” he said. “The way that they do that is basically, by gaslighting parents.”

 

Moynihan did not provide a direct response to Lagnado’s allegation.

 

“In the event that a parent feels their concerns or questions have not been addressed by their principal, the individual should contact their school superintendent for support,” she said.

 

A recent report published by the Ontario Autism Coalition, argues that the provincial government is not providing school boards with adequate funds to meet students’ needs.

 

Of the 430-odd respondents to the organization’s survey, more than 50 per cent said that some or none of their student’s individual education plan accommodations were followed consistently.

 

A third of families also reported that they felt their child had not been placed in an appropriate classroom placement to meet their needs. (49 per cent felt their placement was appropriate.)

 

Asked about the report, Education Minister Jill Dunlop told The Trillium that the province has made “historic” investments in special education.

 

Where to from here?

 

On Monday, Lepofsky told TorontoToday that he is frustrated that the TDSB will not consider the development of an alternative pathway.

 

“TDSB staff have presented no evidence that their existing pathways solve the problem,” he said. “The fact that parents report difficulties getting their child’s disability-related needs met in too many cases proves that the status quo does not work for everyone.”

 

Lagnado, too, expressed disappointment. “Yes, this is about underfunding at the provincial level, but it’s also about gross mismanagement at the board level,” he said.

 

Parent Melissa Rojas Montoya said the lack of willingness to explore a better path for concerned parents is alarming. Rojas Montoya is also seeking placement of her child in a diagnostic kindergarten, but has not yet received confirmation on whether this will be possible, she said.

 

Etobicoke Centre school trustee Dan MacLean told TorontoToday he believes there needs to be “improved pathways of parent interaction” between parents and the TDSB.

 

He said trustees will continue to monitor and support the work of staff in this area.