AODA Alliance
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
Yet More Proof that Too Many Students with Disabilities are Severely Underserved in Ontario Schools
May 23, 2025
SUMMARY
You would think that elected politicians running a provincial government would make it a priority to effectively serve students with disabilities in Ontario schools!
Last month, on April 23, 2025, the Toronto Star reported on an extremely disturbing report that Community Living Ontario had made public entitled “Crisis in the Classroom – Exclusion, Seclusion and Restraint of Students with Disabilities in Ontario Schools.” Read that Star article below.
This Community Living Ontario report reaffirmed other earlier reports and media reporting, when it concluded:
- 29% of caregivers reported that their child had been secluded in school, i.e., placed in a separate space away from their peers, often behind locked or blocked doors.
- 14% of caregivers reported that their child had been restrained in school, including being held down on the ground, held while standing, and held while being forced to walk.
- Students living in households with lower parental education and income levels were at increased risk for both seclusion and restraint.
- A large percentage of respondents reported experiences of exclusion:
- One in five students were attending school on a part-time or modified schedule.
- 31% of students had been sent home or instructed to stay home because the school was unable to meet their needs.
- More than half of caregivers reported that their children were ‘sometimes,’ ‘often,’ or ‘always’ excluded from academic events and opportunities.
- One in four students represented in the survey ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ enjoy school or feel valued or accepted by school staff.
- 40% of students avoided school or were reluctant to attend because of anxiety and fear caused by their experiences within the school community.”
The Ford government’s failure for over three years to implement the comprehensive recommendations of the K-12 Standards Development Committee through the enactment of a strong Education Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act continues to hurt hundreds of thousands of Ontario’s students with disabilities. This new report and the Toronto Star coverage of it is just more proof of that sad fact.
Just last month, the April 14, 2025 AODA Alliance Update reported:
“On April 1, 2025, there was a very disturbing report in The Trillium, a respected news source that reports on Queen’s Park. It revealed hitherto-secret Ford Government internal data from the Ministry of Education about the numbers of school days that students have lost because their principal has refused to allow them to come to school. The AODA Alliance, the Ontario Autism Coalition, Autism Ontario, Community Living Ontario, and other disability advocates have been sounding the alarm for years that this arbitrary power, which the Education Act gives school principals in Ontario, has disproportionately been used on students with disabilities. It is unfair, overbroad, and in desperate need of reform. The Trillium article is set out below.”
Two weeks earlier, the March 30, 2025 AODA Alliance Update reported this troubling news:
“A March 28, 2025, CBC News report, set out below, reveals that almost a year after a vulnerable student with disabilities was found dead in a Trenton school’s isolation room, the school board has not taken important steps needed to publicly account for the cause of this death, and to prevent such future tragedies from happening.
It has been almost a year since a high school student with disabilities, Landyn Ferris, was found dead in a high school’s isolation room in Trenton, Ontario. So far, there has been no public accounting for the cause of his death. No coroner’s inquest has been called. The school board has not made public any report explaining what happened and why, leading to this death. The Ford Government has been asleep at the switch.”
Now look back almost half a year, to the December 4, 2024 AODA Alliance Update. We then revealed this:
For almost five years, the AODA Alliance, as well as any number of other disability organizations, have been trying to get the Ontario Government to rein in the sweeping power of every school principal in an Ontario-funded school to exclude a student from school. This power has disproportionately been used against students with disabilities. When students with disabilities are excluded from school, their fundamental right to an education is denied.
For years, the Ontario Government has done nothing to fix this, as far as we could tell. In July 2020, we made public a scathing report, that shows that practices vary wildly from school board to school board. That report is entitled “For Too Much of Ontario, Each School Principal Is a Law Unto Themselves, When It Comes to the Right of Students with Disabilities to Go To School — A Report by the AODA Alliance on the Sweeping Power of Ontario School Principals to Refuse to Admit a Student to School.” The Ford Government has never disputed its accuracy or even responded to it.
In the past few days, we learned via the grapevine that the Ontario Ministry of Education is considering the possibility of issuing a “Policy and Program Memorandum” (PPM) to every school board giving directions for the first time that could regulate or limit how this sweeping power is used. The Government is holding some sort of a consultation on this.
The Government did not tell the AODA Alliance or key disability advocacy organizations about this. We have never been invited to take part in this, which is inexcusable. We and other disability organizations have been very public for years, advocating for reform. All should be included in an open consultation.
On December 4, 2024, the AODA Alliance wrote a strong letter to the Ministry of Education officials who appear to be responsible for this consultation, which we set out below. We have asked to attend the December 10, 2024 consultative webinar that the Government appears to have scheduled. We have also insisted that a wide spectrum of disability organizations be invited as well. We object to the Government’s apparent plan to keep confidential the draft PPM that they have under consideration. The public, including students with special education needs and their families, have a right to know what this draft now says, and to have their voices heard.
We got indirect word that that private consultation meeting, to which we were never invited, was cancelled, to be rescheduled at a future date. As far as we have heard, it has never been rescheduled.
How You Can Help
- Contact Premier Ford. Tell him to enact the promised Education Accessibility Standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
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.
There have been 142 days since Ontario failed to meet the January 1, 2025 deadline for becoming accessible to people with disabilities set by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. What is the Ford Government’s plan of action?
MORE DETAILS
Toronto Star April 23, 2025
Originally posted at https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/kids-held-on-the-ground-by-staff-others-sent-home-ontario-students-with-disabilities-are/article_3190abf1-5d52-4224-946f-c377d9999393.html
Students with disabilities in crisis, report finds
Community Living Ontario outlines use of secluding, restraining, excluding children in schools
Isabel Teotonio Toronto Star
Children with special education needs being held on the ground by staff. Kids having major meltdowns and being locked in a small room of the school. And students being sent home – or asked to stay there – because of staff’s inability to manage their behaviour.
Those are some of the scenes playing out provincewide, according to the report “Crisis in the Classroom,” released Wednesday by Community Living Ontario, a non-profit provincial association that advocates for those with intellectual disabilities and their families.
It presents data highlighting how students with disabilities are being subjected to restraint, seclusion and exclusion in Ontario schools, and is based on the survey findings of 541 parents and caregivers about their children’s experiences during the 2022-23 academic year.
Twenty-nine per cent said their children had been separated from peers, often behind locked or blocked doors; 14 per cent said that they had been restrained by school staff, including on the ground; and 31 per cent said their kids had been sent home – or told to stay home – because the school couldn’t meet their needs.
“I was shocked,” said Shawn Pegg, director of social policy and strategic initiatives at Community Living Ontario, who authored the report. “I feel like members of the public wouldn’t believe this is actually happening in their schools … We need to do something.
“What we heard over and over again from parents, teachers, principals, unions is that there aren’t enough supports in the classroom to support the learning and emotional needs of many students with disabilities,” said Pegg, noting one in five students have special education needs. “Also many school staff don’t have the knowledge and training needed to prevent what we’re calling emotional dysregulation, so this can lead to children acting out.”
According to the report, there’s little or no provincial guidance on seclusion, restraint and exclusion, and no provincial data. Instead, school boards have created their own policies and principals implement them differently.
The association is calling on the province to increase staffing and supports for students; boost access to trauma-informed training for educational staff; implement “clear” regulations and policies on seclusion, restraint and exclusion; and require schools, boards and the Ministry of Education track the use of these measures.
Emma Testani, press secretary for Education Minister Paul Calandra, said all students, including those with special education needs, deserve access to the supports they need to succeed in school.
“Since coming into government, we have increased funding for special education supports every single year. We are investing almost $4 billion annually for special education – the largest investment in Ontario history. We have also added 4,000 education assistants to support teachers, parents, and students with special education needs,” she told the Star. “We will continue to work with parents and educators to meet the changing needs of our classrooms, but it is absolutely critical that all schools have a plan in place to ensure the safety of their students. School boards must deliver on their mandate to support our students for success.”
Elizabeth Garkowski, co-founder of Ontario Parents for Education Support, said “our children are severely undersupported.” Schools are doing the best they can, “but they can only do so much with the resources that they’re given.”
Garkowski said her daughter, who has Down syndrome and autism, hasn’t experienced seclusion, restraint or exclusion, but she has heard from many families provincewide who have.
David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, said the report “adds to the mountain of proof that we have an exceedingly serious problem in Ontario schools which cries out for immediate, well-known action.”
As chair of the Toronto District School Board’s Special Education Advisory Committee — comprised of members from organizations representing parents who have kids with disabilities or special education needs — Lepofsky has been sounding the alarm about exclusions, noting, “Every student is supposed to have the fundamental legal right to go to school.” The committee wants the TDSB to create a central number parents can call if their child is excluded from school. It also wants teachers to use a unique attendance code to mark absences, so the TDSB can track how many kids are excluded.
But a TDSB spokesperson said specific attendance codes, and a tracking process, already exist.
“Placing a student on a modified day schedule is a collaborative decision and accommodation involving parents, the principal and the superintendent,” said the spokesperson.