When it comes to ensuring an education for their autistic son Lucas, Nick and Sonia Carnovale feel they’re running out of options.
After the family moved to Alliston last year, Lucas, 14, began attending Grade 9 at Holy Trinity Catholic High School in September. That was until the family received a call on Thursday, Jan. 9, asking them to pick up Lucas early, and another the next day telling them he would not be allowed to return. For just how long remains unknown.
That came as a shock to his parents, as Lucas had recently transitioned from attending half days to full days, which they thought had been going well. While he suggested Lucas return to half days, Nick said the school declined and insisted on the exclusion.
“How can they do that?” he said. “Like every other child in this province, he deserves the right to be in school and he doesn’t have that right, right now.”
While Ontario’s Education Act outlines elementary and secondary students’ rights to education, it does permit schools to exclude students under specific circumstances.
Pauline Stevenson, communications manager for the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board (SMCDSB), said the board couldn’t comment on Lucas’s individual situation due to privacy concerns, but speaking generally, she explained excluding students from schools is something the board only does temporarily and only in “very extraordinary circumstance.”
“It is a last resort measure that would be used after all available strategies to keep the student at school have been exhausted,” she said. “We can understand how difficult these decisions would be for family members.”
The board and schools make it a priority to maintain communication and work closely with students’ family, support workers and other staff in order to resolve those situations and bring students back to school safely “as quickly as possible,” according to Stevenson.
The Carnovales said their experience differed. Nick explained that at first, there was no official explanation given for his son’s exclusion, but that school and board staff later claimed Lucas is a safety concern for himself and others. That was supposedly due to his tendency to wander out of his classroom and into others, as well as an incident where Lucas climbed the outside of a staircase.
Nick explained that his son was diagnosed with autism at age two, is mostly non-verbal, and in terms of his intellectual abilities said Lucas is “probably at a Grade 1 level.”
Documents included in Lucas’s Ontario student record (OSR) provided by the Carnovales show staff were instructed to keep their distance in case Lucas becomes “physical” and use vocal commands to direct Lucas back to his classroom, rather than leading him by the hand.
“He needs to be guided when he’s straying and they won’t do that,” Nick said.
Different drafts of the safety plan included in Lucas’s individual education plan (IEP) offer differing accounts of whether or not Lucas engages in physical aggression such as grabbing clothing, pulling hair or throwing objects. They also differ on whether or not staff should use personal protective equipment (PPE) such as a padded jacket.
Nick debates the accuracy of those records and claims he’s never seen his son behave that way.
“Lucas has never harmed himself or another soul, ever,” Nick said.
Meanwhile, emails between the Carnovales and school/board staff explain school staff addressed Lucas leaving his classroom with a process referred to as “safe halls.”
That can happen for a variety of reasons — such as a student having trouble controlling emotions, a medical situation, or a biohazard clean-up — and involves closing off a different amount of the school depending on various circumstances, according to Stevenson. She explained students remain in their classroom and continue as normal. It is not a hold and secure or a lockdown.
Based on Nick’s understanding, when Lucas wanders, an announcement is made over the school's public address (PA) system warning other teachers to lock the doors to their classrooms until Lucas has returned to his own.
In order to reduce the impact on other students and the stigma created for his son, Nick recommended locking just Lucas’s room to prevent him from wandering, but said he was told that would be considered a fire hazard.
Lucas’s safety plan instructs staff to escort Lucas from pick up to his classroom by walking beside but behind him at a distance, a sight Nick compared to scenes from old King Kong movies.
“It hurts my soul,” he said. “Every autistic kid is different. My son has a little more challenges.”
Some of those issues include trouble using the washroom by himself, and making a mess while eating, according to Nick, who said none of those issues prevented Lucas from attending elementary school under the York Catholic District School Board, even if the Carnovales occasionally needed to bring their son a change of clothing.
“They never excluded him — not one day, not one minute,” he said. “The compassion in the (York) board compared to what my wife and I are receiving in (Simcoe) is like apples to oranges.”
School board’s response
While SMCDSB representatives didn’t directly answer questions about whether staff could use physical touch to guide students with special needs, how many staff at Holy Trinity are qualified under the Education Act as special-education teachers, and how many special-needs students are enrolled with the board, they did illustrate the efforts taken to accommodate those students.
At Holy Trinity, staff care “deeply” about the well-being of the students, have “extensive” training and follow protocols and procedures to respond “compassionately” when issues arise, according to Stevenson.
“Our schools are focused on fostering safe and inclusive spaces for all students,” she said.
Like all of the board’s schools, Holy Trinity remains committed to ensuring everyone feels “included, valued, and safe,” according to Stevenson, who said staff in each school “go to great lengths” to provide support and care for students with special needs while also keeping a commitment to safety of all students and staff “at the core” of everything they do.
“Balancing both of these important priorities is extremely complicated and it has become increasingly more so in our current climate,” she said.
Stevenson emphasized an “increasing disparity” between the human and financial resources available compared to the number of students with “complex” special needs, and noted that all 29 publicly funded English Catholic school boards in Ontario are running deficits for special education — increasing each year.
As a result, Stevenson noted SMCDSB trustees are advocating through the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association (OCSTA) for the Ministry of Education to review the province’s special education funding.
“The delivery of special education services in Ontario schools has changed drastically over the past several years — the needs are greater, the skills required to support students are significant, and there are staffing shortages — we need the funding formula to reflect that reality,” she said.
It’s an effort OCSTA has been making for the last few years. A recent submission to the ministry for the 2024-25 school year recommended the ministry not only increase the base funding for students with special needs, but also streamline the application process, simplify the eligibility criteria for staff, review “needs based” funding models for special education and ensure students with special education needs can be provided psycho-educational assessments in a timely manner.
Parents also facing funding issues
School boards aren’t the only ones facing funding challenges, though. The Trillium found some parents who were unable to access services felt they had no choice but to surrender their special-needs children to protective services in order to get them the help they need.
The Carnovales situation hasn’t reached that level yet, and they were able to find a spot for Lucas at Hand in Hand Therapy Centre in town, where Nick said his son has no issues with behaviour thanks to the well-trained staff.
However, that comes at cost of roughly $5,000 each month, according to Nick, who explained that every day Lucas is excluded from school is another day the family needs to pay for him to spend extra time at the therapy centre.
“With therapy being so much, I have no problem telling you, I’m about five pay cheques from being homeless,” he said.
One of the reasons the family wanted to see Lucas enrolled at Holy Trinity was its location.
While Nick works in the city, Sonia works in town and Lucas’s grandmother lives in the neighbourhood near the school, making it much simpler for family to attend the school when needed.
Given everything that has happened with Holy Trinity, the parents aren’t certain sending their son back would be a good idea, and even though they would prefer him to have a Catholic education, they applied to have him enrolled at Bradford District High School (BDHS) in the hopes its staff would be better suited to help Lucas.
Then came the news that BDHS hadn't accepted the transfer, coupled with the fact that Nick found funding for full-time therapy, while available, could take “months, even years,” to be approved.
While correspondence from school/board staff with the Carnovales make regular mention of meetings to discuss Lucas’s situation, Nick said the family isn’t invited to attend. Instead, he said they only receive a weekly call from student engagement and learning superintendent Scot Gorecki, who has yet to say when Lucas can return to school.
“Meanwhile, we are left hanging looking for answers,” Nick said.