EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Early in the election campaign, David Lepofsky opened his door in Eglinton—Lawrence and was greeted by the voice of a young man campaigning for local Progressive Conservative candidate Michelle Cooper.
Lepofsky, who is blind and the chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) Alliance, asked the campaigner what the PCs would do for students with disabilities, while also pointing to the AODA Alliance’s website.
But what the young man said next took him by surprise.
"Clearly, he heard me say 'AODA.' And he said, "Oh, I'm friends with David Lepofsky!" he recalled during a phone interview with The Trillium.
"I said 'I am David Lepofsky, who are you?' And he just turns and walks away, clearly at a clip, and he's gone ... I just walked away stunned, and then I put it on Facebook."
This odd encounter is the closest the PCs have come to acknowledging Lepofsky or the concerns he and other advocates have been raising about accessibility in Ontario and the need for special education reform.
The NDP, Liberals and Greens have all signed the AODA Alliance's “Accessible Ontario Pledge,” promising that if they form government they will implement 10 policy proposals to improve accessibility across the province. The PCs are the only party not to have signed the pledge so far.
Out of the three signatories, the Green Party of Ontario dedicates the most space in its election platform to disability issues, promising improvements to the Assistive Devices Program, increased funding to community living agencies, ensuring people with disabilities can access housecleaning and other services, and promising to hire more special education staff.
The Liberal platform, meanwhile, promises to clear "special education-related waitlists," and the NDP platform promises to give students with disabilities “the support they deserve."
The fact that these issues are not being talked about during the campaign frustrates advocates like Lepofsky, as well as parents of special needs children, especially after the death of Trenton High School student Landyn Ferris last spring, after he was left alone in a "sensory room."
"(Elections) always boil it down to two or three issues," said Lepofsky. "And if you are not one of those two issues, you (are out of luck.)"
Leo Lagnado, a father and representative of Autism Ontario, is not surprised that concerns about special education have fallen largely by the wayside this election.
"No one really cares about disability," Lagnado said. "That sounds horrible, but in political terms, it doesn't get votes."
Nora Green from Inclusion Action in Ontario said it is "horrifying" that special education reform is not more of an election issue following Ferris' death.
Green argued there needs to be provincewide standards for special education staffing, policy and facilities. As it stands, Ontario's 72 school boards run special education independently, with their own set of rules and procedures.
"School boards are left on their own making decisions about things like sensory rooms or isolation rooms because there are no standards from the province. These are rooms that school boards put students in when they are at a loss of how to manage a situation," said Green, referring to Ferris.
"A kid has died, and the government doesn't think that's an impetus to make a decision about standardizing what school boards are supposed to do and setting some expectations?"
In 2022, the province's own Kindergarten to Grade 12 education standards committee recommended making the education system "fully accessible, equitable, inclusive and learner-centred" by 2025. These recommendations included a call for standardized policies for the use of sensory rooms and physical restraints, as well as when students can be excluded from school.
One of the things that Lagnado said he would have liked political parties to have promised this election is to "make exclusions completely forbidden."
"Currently, legislation actually allows schools to go and (tell) a parent, 'Your kid can't come to school right under certain circumstances,'" explained Lagnado.
"They could say, 'We're going to make legislation so that schools are simply forbidden from excluding. Period. I think that's the starting point."
Vivian Petho also doesn’t think special education and disability issues are getting enough attention during this election campaign.
Petho, whose 12-year-old son Solomon is a Grade 6 student in the Upper Grand District School Board, said she would like to see more promises of funding for special education and more support.
“Instead of cutting back and clawing back in spec ed fields, we need more (educational assistants) in the school, we need more supports, we need more people trained to work with and support kids who need more than just a teacher at the front of a classroom of 25,” she said.
“I fully believe special ed kids are being housed in the public school system … they're not being educated because they're considered a challenge — they don't learn the same way, they need this extra support,” said Petho.
“My child's going to get left behind because he has a diagnosis. He's not the only child who's getting left behind, there are thousands of them,” she said.
Petho said parents like her and her husband are constantly having to fight “to try to get my child an equal seat at the table, and he can't even get that.”
“The politicians need to look at and actually be able to face a parent like me and say, ‘I hear you, I see you, I see your child, and you are and your child is important too.’ Nobody's saying that to me,” she said.
Solomon was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when he was five, which has affected his ability to communicate verbally, although he is able to speak, read, write and use communication apps. Nonetheless, his family and school have clashed over his education.
“My son is in grade six, doing curriculum three years behind his peers because of his diagnosis and the distinct discrimination against the fact that he has a disability or diagnosis attached to him,” she said, adding that she’s filed complaints to the College of Teachers related to this.
Green and Lagnado also want to see the next provincial government move to prevent school boards from cutting special education staff and programming, as Peel District School Board recently did, and to better fund special education in general.
Whatever standards are eventually implemented, said Green, there will also need to be enforcement mechanisms as well as performance measures to live up to.
"There have to be consequences. And I hate saying that, because ... I'd prefer to take a learning stance than a punitive stance with people. But it seems the difficulty right now is there is no accountability," she said. "There is no directive from the province to tell school boards that they have to evaluate the effectiveness of those classes or programs."
Asked about the need for new standards in special education, NDP Leader Marit Stiles said she wants to see a "complete review of the way we fund education in the first place." Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie didn't commit to new standards either but did promise to hire more staff and spend more money.
"We need special education teachers in our classrooms to help our children who have special needs. So yes, we will fund education," said Crombie.
The PC Party, meanwhile, told The Trillium in a statement it has “invested more funding in student mental health and special education in schools than any other government.”
“Ontario is meeting, achieving and exceeding the AODA standards and requirements across the province, as well as investing to upgrade schools to be more accessible,” said a campaign spokesperson.