1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:01:12,900
This is a special episode of Elementary. A podcast from the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. I'm Meagan Perry. On March 18, ETFO held a press conference to release a position paper on special education. The paper is called promises unfulfilled, addressing the special education crisis in Ontario. It examines the history of special education in Ontario, challenges in the modern classroom, and provides recommendations for what the Ministry of Education must do going forward to provide adequate supports for all children with special education needs. There were five speakers at the press conference. First, you will hear from ETFO President Karen Brown, then Vice President of Community Outreach for the Ontario Autism Coalition, Kate Dudley-Logue. Joanna Conrad is an advisory member on the Greater Essex County District School Board's Special Education Advisory Committee, and the mother of three children, one of whom has special needs. Jennifer Pinder is a special education resource teacher in the Waterloo Region District School Board and Ricardo Tranjan is a political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. We begin with ETFO President Karen Brown.
2
00:01:13,950 --> 00:04:31,170
Good morning, everyone. For over two decades, ETFO has been sounding the alarm about systemic failures in special education that to continue to harm the very students we were meant to serve. In 2002, we released a position paper titled Fulfilling the Promise: ensuring success for students with special needs that outline the issues created by policy and funding changes made by the Mike Harris government. The recommendations in that report were clear, we need to provide more funding, more resources and more supports for students with disabilities. We also needed a more inclusive and accessible system that would allow all children, including those with disabilities, to reach their full potential. But here we are, 23 years later, and nothing has changed. In fact, it's worse. We are seeing the same issues, issues that were clearly identified so many years ago continue to fester and deepen. Despite all the research recommendations and countless voices of those working with students directly, the provincial government has failed to take meaningful actions to address the concerns, and so today, we are facing a crisis in our classrooms. We are witnessing the negative impacts of conservative neglect of special education every single day. Educators are drowning in a system with insufficient resources and supports for student services for students, we see the devastating consequences of a lack of early intervention, children who are falling behind before they even have a chance to catch up. We hear from families who face barriers to accessing programs, programs that can make all the difference for their children's future. And we witness the reality of increasing school violence because of unmet student needs. The Ford government has allowed the situation to deteriorate. This is just not an issue of funding. It is an issue of equity, of justice and human dignity. All children, including those with disabilities deserve a high quality education. This is not a request. It is their right. But under the conservatives, the right is being denied to far many, far too many students with special education needs. The Education Act on the Ontario Human Rights Code require that children with disabilities receive appropriate services and supports to help them succeed. But what good are these rights when the government continues to fail to provide the necessary resources and supports to students, educators, education workers to make that education a reality? In the report ETFO is releasing today, you will find 27 recommendations to guide the Ministry of Education in addressing this crisis, including indexing special education funding to inflation and updating data in an improved funding formula to help close the gaps between the existing programs and the needed supports. Here to explain these recommendations is Ricardo Trajan, a political economics and senior researcher with the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. Ricardo.
3
00:04:37,390 --> 00:10:34,210
Good morning, everybody. No matter how we look at it, education funding in Ontario is highly inadequate. If we look at an year over year basis, education funding is not keeping up with inflation. It's not keeping up with enrollment growth. This year, schools were asked to make due with $1,500 dollars less per student compared to what they received in 2018. If we look at the way we allocate funding, the fund, the funding formula, misses the target in a number of ways. Long story short, there's a lot of guesstimate. There's a lot of neglect, or the fact that so much of the costs of running schools are fixed costs, and that per student funding does not quite meet the needs. When you look at special education in particular, we see that 87% of all the money that is allocated for special education is based either on general enrollment, on a or on a poor quality statistical model. Only 13% of the funding is actually allocated based on known and assessed needs. If we looked at our infrastructure, the Ontario government admits to $17 billion in school repair deficit, and that is probably an underestimation of the real condition on the ground. If we look at funding to deal with crisis, be it COVID, be it the rise of racism, be it violence in our schools. School funding doesn't is not deployed fast enough, and it's not flexible enough to allow boards and schools to deal with this crisis in the way that they need. Especially in a context where the school board reserves have been depleted because boards have to fix the roof and address day to day problems that would have been funded should we had had a better funding formula. So these all sound like big numbers, but what they hide on the day to day is that our schools are about providing children the supports they need to become their better selves. It is about giving educators the supports that they need to be able to help the children to achieve their better selves. It's about telling the parents that they're not alone, that they can count in schools to bring their kids to that level, and the entire government, it's failing. It's failing, and it's failing miserably at that task right now. So in the report, we dive into these numbers, and what we realize is that the allocation, the special education funding, what it provides in real, concrete terms, is anything between an hour and two and a half hours of dedicated support to a student with special education needs, one to two and a half hours in a school week of 25 hours. That's less than 10% and that's best case scenario. We know that in practice, that's not how funding is allocated. We know that in practice, what is happening is that principals and school boards are being asked to move money around. They're literally robbing Peter to pay Paul every single day, every school year. So that can only be addressed with changing the way we fund in schools, and then the report gets to it. And what we're proposing as a way to change funding and to fix the funding is a four step approach. The first one, obviously would be to index funding to inflation and to simply increase the levels of funding. That's something that can be done immediately, and that would have a very concrete impact on the lives of children starting next year. But that wouldn't be enough. That wouldn't be nearly enough. So the second step would be to fix that education, that statistical model on which so much of the funding for special education is determined. Those are very detailed technical discussions. I won't get into it, but there are ways of using better data. They're using ways of using more of the administrative data that we have available and more up to date data to improve that statistical model, but the ultimate goal would be, then to address the waiting lists and start assessing kids so that we can fund based on needs and not funding based on estimates. So let me just finish by saying this, when we look at this closely, when you take the numbers apart, when you ask principals what they're actually doing on a day to day basis, what we realize is that Ontario is not funding special education. What we're doing is allocating somewhat arbitrarily sums of money to school boards and asking them to ration it, asking them to spread it and give everyone a little bit. So we're not funding special education in Ontario. We are rationing, somewhat arbitrarily determinant amounts and hoping that that will get students the support they need. But as other chapters in the study has shown very clearly, it doesn't. Thank you.
4
00:10:36,310 --> 00:11:17,950
Thank you, Ricardo, for sharing your expertise on the funding structures and challenges Special Education faces in Ontario. Jennifer Pinder, a special education resource teacher with the Waterloo Region District School Board and ETFO member, brings a wealth of experience and insight to this discussion. Throughout her career, Jennifer has worked extensively with students with special education needs, including teaching in a specialized alternative continuum of education class and as a development support teacher for 25 schools. Additionally, in her past role as a social emotional learning consultant, she provided guidance and resources to all 107 schools within her school board. Jennifer.
5
00:11:18,710 --> 00:16:59,750
Thank you, President Brown, Good morning. Hello. In the next few minutes, I'd like to share with you what I think all parents and caregivers deserve to know, what students understand yet the ministry continues to ignore and my hope for my colleagues in education and the future of education. So let's start by getting real clear student behavior and student needs is not at the foundation of this crisis government neglect and underfunding, absolutely is. The complex needs of students continues to increase while the resources available to support them well are almost non existent. As a teacher, I am far too familiar with what it's like to evacuate a class due to physical and/or emotional violence, and so are students. Everyone in a school building is currently experiencing the effects of the severity and the normalization of violence and high high levels of stress. The lack of special education funding in Ontario affects every single student, whether they know it or not, parents and caregivers, you deserve to know what your child is experiencing when you send them to school every day, and if you already know this, if this is familiar information to you, I acknowledge the toll it is likely taking on your child and on you and on your family. As an elementary school teacher, I can tell you two key concepts that grade one students understand, yet, unfortunately, the education system they were they are in does not reflect it, nor do the people who fund it demonstrate these concepts. The first concept is that my job as a teacher is to make sure everyone is safe and everyone is learning. You see, we don't learn unless we feel safe and we feel like we belong, and once we feel safe and we belong, we can learn. And learning looks different for lots of people, because all brains learn differently, and that's great. And stressed brains Well, stressed brains don't learn so well. So first safety and predictability, and then we can do our best learning. The second concept that kids understand is that everybody gets what they need in order to feel successful and be successful. And so for one student, what that might look like is writing a beautiful paragraph, and for another student it might look like getting their lunch from their backpack by themselves for the very first time. Both those students deserve the resources to support that success. We should have high expectations based on an understanding of a student's learning profile align with trained professionals and resources in spaces so that every student has what they need in order to succeed, this requires early intervention, timely access to assessment and various placement and support options to meet students' diverse needs. Implementing these two key fundamental concepts that kids understand is currently impossible due to the lack of funding. Safety is essential for learning, and everybody gets what they need in order to be successful. Kids get that however, the mid. Ministry clearly doesn't. Instead of recognizing the need for implementing these fundamental concepts, instead of attending to previously made recommendations, the ministry is spending time feeding us bread crumbs in education and then telling us it's dinner. It's performative nonsense, and it's a cover up campaign to save money in which children are negatively impacted. Your children, our children, they deserve better. You will hear folks say inclusion without support is abandonment, and that is precisely what is happening in classrooms across Ontario. Educators see it every day. To my colleagues in education, I see you working so hard, and I want you to know that our work matters, but I also want you to know you are not solely responsible for propping up an underfunded system. I know you want to do more for students, but you are not given the time, the space, nor the resources to do so. And I hope you know that. Hope is a fascinating feeling and cognitive process. And if I'm honest, my hope has shifted over time. I no longer hope that if the ministry simply knew better, it would do better. That time has passed. No longer can we let the limitations of this ongoing lack of funding define the value and the worth of children in Ontario. Here is where my hope lies, though now in this policy papers, clear and thoughtful recommendations in the continued dialogue and action among stakeholders, and I hope we continue to advocate for our students so that everybody has what they need in order to be successful for who they are and to be safe and to learn. Thank you.
6
00:17:00,230 --> 00:17:23,540
Thank you, Jennifer, it's not just educators who feel the impact. Families face barriers to accessing essential community programs, and many watch their children struggle in a system that is failing them at every turn. Kate Dudley-Logue, Vice President of Community Outreach at the Ontario Autism Coalition, joins us to share a community perspective. Kate.
7
00:17:23,000 --> 00:22:03,200
Good morning, and thank you to ETFO for putting this important piece of work together and inviting the Ontario Autism Coalition to participate in today's press conference. As many of you here are likely aware, the OAC has been very concerned with systemic issues that have placed special education under significant strain for many years now. Repeated policy failures have left our most vulnerable students faltering under an extreme lack of resources and funding. If we are being honest, this has become more of a crisis than a strain. Students with special education needs are falling through the cracks at alarming rates, and in many cases, are simply not accessing education at all. The OAC has a large membership of over 26,000 our community is very engaged, and we hear stories daily about the shortcomings and inability students face when trying to access spec ed programming in Ontario that is safe and meaningful, we've brought numerous stories to Queen's Park and to the media to highlight a system that is not only failing students with disabilities, but is often dangerous to these students. Children with disabilities, eloping school property being excluded daily and neglect that has gone so far that tragically, a student with complex disabilities died last year after being left alone in a classroom for hours. This past year, the OAC embarked on a survey asking families of students with disabilities pertinent questions about their kids experiences with special education in Ontario during the 2023-2024 school year. The results were distressing, and they track with everything that ETFO is addressing in this report here today. Some of the data we collected showed that half of families do not feel that their children are actually safe at school or are receiving a meaningful education. And perhaps the largest example of the lack of supports is the rising level of exclusions that are faced by students with disabilities. 6% of families report that their children experienced full exclusion during the 2023-24 school year, the primary reason they were given was that the school did not have the needed resources to keep the student safe and supported. It is also becoming normalized that students with disabilities do not attend school full time. With 19% of families reporting that their kids are on a modified schedule, the majority of whom are only at school for one to three hours a day. Again, the most cited reason being that the school lacked the resources to keep the children safe. Every year, more school boards are announcing cuts to their special education classrooms that they offer, with some boards moving to what's called a full inclusion model. Most recently, this is being proposed at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, where they are recommending that 39 special education classrooms be cut, while the OAC believes that inclusion is absolutely in the best interest of many students when proper supports are in place, it is clear that those supports do not exist due to the lack of commitment and funding from the Ministry of Education. As ETFO states in this report, the inclusion model is not working. Not only are smaller, quieter classrooms necessary for some students with the most complex needs, but the supports simply are not there in mainstream classrooms to foster success for those students who could actually benefit from integration. And this needs to change. In closing, the OAC stands firmly with educators who are really doing the best they can with what little resources they're being given. Make no mistake, the resource shortages and systemic gaps that undermine special education in Ontario are not just problematic for disabled students who have a right to a fulsome needs based education, but also to educators and to every other student in our mainstream classrooms. We support ETFO's recommendations as actions that must be taken in order to fix our fundamentally broken special education system. Ontario must do better. Thank you.
8
00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:29,010
Thank you, Kate. Our final speaker this morning is Joanna Conrad. A mother of three children, one of whom has special needs and an advisory member of the Greater Essex County District School Board's Special Education Advisory Committee, SEAC, representing up about down a local organization that supports families who have a loved one with Down syndrome, Joanna.
9
00:22:30,290 --> 00:45:09,980
When my daughter was born 10 years ago, she was the first person with Down syndrome I'd ever met. I had less than 24 hours of pure joy before fear took over. Fear of the unknown, of what her future would look like, of how the world would treat her. Although a diagnosis cannot predict the depth of love a parent has for their child, a diagnosis does matter. It is the key to accessing the right supports, whether for speech and language, reading, writing or math. It allows educators to understand a child's needs and provide the interventions necessary for success. Yet we are moving in the wrong direction. The Board and the ministry have shifted away from formally identifying students, opting instead for tiered supports. That means fewer students will be recognized as needing special education, but the reality is that the number of students who actually need support is not decreasing, it's increasing. The numbers are being buried, but the struggle remains. So my journey as a mother quickly became a crash course in advocacy, a roller coaster ride of hope and heartbreak and sadly, the most terrifying drops have been in the world of education. When my daughter started school, I learned the hard truth, the system wasn't built for her. Navigating it required strategy, persistence and a fight I wasn't prepared for, but one I couldn't walk away from. There was a moment when I realized just how little value was placed on my daughter's education, and she's not alone. Across schools, students with disabilities are missing critical days of learning, not because they're sick, but because there aren't enough staff or supports in place to meet their needs, the best way I can describe this experience is to ask you to imagine having a terminal illness and being denied treatment, the helplessness, the panic, the knowledge that time is slipping away. That's what it feels like to watch your child lose the years of learning, knowing that the system is failing them and knowing that the people with the power to change it are simply not doing enough. And let's be clear, this isn't about blaming teachers. Teachers are overworked, under supported and drowning in impossible expectations. Special Education funding is slashed, staff are burnt out, and students are slipping through the cracks. Decisions are being made behind closed doors, without transparency, without logic and without consulting the families they impact. Specialized programs that provide a critical bridge between inclusive classrooms and specialized settings are being cut. Assessments are delayed for years. IEPs cannot be followed. Special Education is being watered down into consultative services, which is really just a fancy way of saying teachers are given more responsibilities with fewer resources. How does that help anyone? if those in power had a child with a disability, I guarantee they would make or they would take a much closer look at funding or lack thereof, because this isn't just about students with disabilities. Underfunding special education affects every child in a classroom when supports aren't in place, learning suffers. Teachers burn out, the whole system breaks down, and we're watching it happen in real time. And this is also not just an educational issue. It's a societal one. We can choose to invest in students now, or we can pay the price later, when the same students, unsupported and unprepared, become adults left behind by society. When my daughter was born, I made her a promise. That promise has turned into a mission, not just for her, but for every child whose parents don't know how to fight or don't even realize that they have to. I want those parents to know that I see you, I hear you, and I'm fighting for your child too, because our children they deserve better, and I will not stop fighting until they get it. Thank you.
10
00:26:50,780 --> 00:48:04,160
Thank you. Joanna. Supporting children with disabilities in elementary school is essential for the economic and social health of Ontario, yet the reality in our schools tells a different story. The right to an education that enables every child to reach their full potential is not just a promise, it is the law, but this government has failed to uphold the law, systemically failing students, educators, education workers, and families. Our comprehensive Promises Unfulfilled position paper, available for download at etfo.ca, explores the history of special education in Ontario, the challenges we face today and the concrete steps the provincial government must take to finally deliver on the promise of an education system that serves all students, including those with disabilities. The Ford government must do better, and we won't stop until they do. Thank you.
11
01:00:05,230 --> 01:00:18,970
You've been listening to a press conference for ETFO's release of promises unfulfilled, addressing the special education crisis in Ontario. You can download the document at etfo.ca in the publications section. Thank you for listening. I'm Meagan Perry.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:01:12,900
This is a special episode of Elementary. A podcast from the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. I'm Meagan Perry. On March 18, ETFO held a press conference to release a position paper on special education. The paper is called promises unfulfilled, addressing the special education crisis in Ontario. It examines the history of special education in Ontario, challenges in the modern classroom, and provides recommendations for what the Ministry of Education must do going forward to provide adequate supports for all children with special education needs. There were five speakers at the press conference. First, you will hear from ETFO President Karen Brown, then Vice President of Community Outreach for the Ontario Autism Coalition, Kate Dudley-Logue. Joanna Conrad is an advisory member on the Greater Essex County District School Board's Special Education Advisory Committee, and the mother of three children, one of whom has special needs. Jennifer Pinder is a special education resource teacher in the Waterloo Region District School Board and Ricardo Tranjan is a political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. We begin with ETFO President Karen Brown.
2
00:01:13,950 --> 00:04:31,170
Good morning, everyone. For over two decades, ETFO has been sounding the alarm about systemic failures in special education that to continue to harm the very students we were meant to serve. In 2002, we released a position paper titled Fulfilling the Promise: ensuring success for students with special needs that outline the issues created by policy and funding changes made by the Mike Harris government. The recommendations in that report were clear, we need to provide more funding, more resources and more supports for students with disabilities. We also needed a more inclusive and accessible system that would allow all children, including those with disabilities, to reach their full potential. But here we are, 23 years later, and nothing has changed. In fact, it's worse. We are seeing the same issues, issues that were clearly identified so many years ago continue to fester and deepen. Despite all the research recommendations and countless voices of those working with students directly, the provincial government has failed to take meaningful actions to address the concerns, and so today, we are facing a crisis in our classrooms. We are witnessing the negative impacts of conservative neglect of special education every single day. Educators are drowning in a system with insufficient resources and supports for student services for students, we see the devastating consequences of a lack of early intervention, children who are falling behind before they even have a chance to catch up. We hear from families who face barriers to accessing programs, programs that can make all the difference for their children's future. And we witness the reality of increasing school violence because of unmet student needs. The Ford government has allowed the situation to deteriorate. This is just not an issue of funding. It is an issue of equity, of justice and human dignity. All children, including those with disabilities deserve a high quality education. This is not a request. It is their right. But under the conservatives, the right is being denied to far many, far too many students with special education needs. The Education Act on the Ontario Human Rights Code require that children with disabilities receive appropriate services and supports to help them succeed. But what good are these rights when the government continues to fail to provide the necessary resources and supports to students, educators, education workers to make that education a reality? In the report ETFO is releasing today, you will find 27 recommendations to guide the Ministry of Education in addressing this crisis, including indexing special education funding to inflation and updating data in an improved funding formula to help close the gaps between the existing programs and the needed supports. Here to explain these recommendations is Ricardo Trajan, a political economics and senior researcher with the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. Ricardo.
3
00:04:37,390 --> 00:10:34,210
Good morning, everybody. No matter how we look at it, education funding in Ontario is highly inadequate. If we look at an year over year basis, education funding is not keeping up with inflation. It's not keeping up with enrollment growth. This year, schools were asked to make due with $1,500 dollars less per student compared to what they received in 2018. If we look at the way we allocate funding, the fund, the funding formula, misses the target in a number of ways. Long story short, there's a lot of guesstimate. There's a lot of neglect, or the fact that so much of the costs of running schools are fixed costs, and that per student funding does not quite meet the needs. When you look at special education in particular, we see that 87% of all the money that is allocated for special education is based either on general enrollment, on a or on a poor quality statistical model. Only 13% of the funding is actually allocated based on known and assessed needs. If we looked at our infrastructure, the Ontario government admits to $17 billion in school repair deficit, and that is probably an underestimation of the real condition on the ground. If we look at funding to deal with crisis, be it COVID, be it the rise of racism, be it violence in our schools. School funding doesn't is not deployed fast enough, and it's not flexible enough to allow boards and schools to deal with this crisis in the way that they need. Especially in a context where the school board reserves have been depleted because boards have to fix the roof and address day to day problems that would have been funded should we had had a better funding formula. So these all sound like big numbers, but what they hide on the day to day is that our schools are about providing children the supports they need to become their better selves. It is about giving educators the supports that they need to be able to help the children to achieve their better selves. It's about telling the parents that they're not alone, that they can count in schools to bring their kids to that level, and the entire government, it's failing. It's failing, and it's failing miserably at that task right now. So in the report, we dive into these numbers, and what we realize is that the allocation, the special education funding, what it provides in real, concrete terms, is anything between an hour and two and a half hours of dedicated support to a student with special education needs, one to two and a half hours in a school week of 25 hours. That's less than 10% and that's best case scenario. We know that in practice, that's not how funding is allocated. We know that in practice, what is happening is that principals and school boards are being asked to move money around. They're literally robbing Peter to pay Paul every single day, every school year. So that can only be addressed with changing the way we fund in schools, and then the report gets to it. And what we're proposing as a way to change funding and to fix the funding is a four step approach. The first one, obviously would be to index funding to inflation and to simply increase the levels of funding. That's something that can be done immediately, and that would have a very concrete impact on the lives of children starting next year. But that wouldn't be enough. That wouldn't be nearly enough. So the second step would be to fix that education, that statistical model on which so much of the funding for special education is determined. Those are very detailed technical discussions. I won't get into it, but there are ways of using better data. They're using ways of using more of the administrative data that we have available and more up to date data to improve that statistical model, but the ultimate goal would be, then to address the waiting lists and start assessing kids so that we can fund based on needs and not funding based on estimates. So let me just finish by saying this, when we look at this closely, when you take the numbers apart, when you ask principals what they're actually doing on a day to day basis, what we realize is that Ontario is not funding special education. What we're doing is allocating somewhat arbitrarily sums of money to school boards and asking them to ration it, asking them to spread it and give everyone a little bit. So we're not funding special education in Ontario. We are rationing, somewhat arbitrarily determinant amounts and hoping that that will get students the support they need. But as other chapters in the study has shown very clearly, it doesn't. Thank you.
4
00:10:36,310 --> 00:11:17,950
Thank you, Ricardo, for sharing your expertise on the funding structures and challenges Special Education faces in Ontario. Jennifer Pinder, a special education resource teacher with the Waterloo Region District School Board and ETFO member, brings a wealth of experience and insight to this discussion. Throughout her career, Jennifer has worked extensively with students with special education needs, including teaching in a specialized alternative continuum of education class and as a development support teacher for 25 schools. Additionally, in her past role as a social emotional learning consultant, she provided guidance and resources to all 107 schools within her school board. Jennifer.
5
00:11:18,710 --> 00:16:59,750
Thank you, President Brown, Good morning. Hello. In the next few minutes, I'd like to share with you what I think all parents and caregivers deserve to know, what students understand yet the ministry continues to ignore and my hope for my colleagues in education and the future of education. So let's start by getting real clear student behavior and student needs is not at the foundation of this crisis government neglect and underfunding, absolutely is. The complex needs of students continues to increase while the resources available to support them well are almost non existent. As a teacher, I am far too familiar with what it's like to evacuate a class due to physical and/or emotional violence, and so are students. Everyone in a school building is currently experiencing the effects of the severity and the normalization of violence and high high levels of stress. The lack of special education funding in Ontario affects every single student, whether they know it or not, parents and caregivers, you deserve to know what your child is experiencing when you send them to school every day, and if you already know this, if this is familiar information to you, I acknowledge the toll it is likely taking on your child and on you and on your family. As an elementary school teacher, I can tell you two key concepts that grade one students understand, yet, unfortunately, the education system they were they are in does not reflect it, nor do the people who fund it demonstrate these concepts. The first concept is that my job as a teacher is to make sure everyone is safe and everyone is learning. You see, we don't learn unless we feel safe and we feel like we belong, and once we feel safe and we belong, we can learn. And learning looks different for lots of people, because all brains learn differently, and that's great. And stressed brains Well, stressed brains don't learn so well. So first safety and predictability, and then we can do our best learning. The second concept that kids understand is that everybody gets what they need in order to feel successful and be successful. And so for one student, what that might look like is writing a beautiful paragraph, and for another student it might look like getting their lunch from their backpack by themselves for the very first time. Both those students deserve the resources to support that success. We should have high expectations based on an understanding of a student's learning profile align with trained professionals and resources in spaces so that every student has what they need in order to succeed, this requires early intervention, timely access to assessment and various placement and support options to meet students' diverse needs. Implementing these two key fundamental concepts that kids understand is currently impossible due to the lack of funding. Safety is essential for learning, and everybody gets what they need in order to be successful. Kids get that however, the mid. Ministry clearly doesn't. Instead of recognizing the need for implementing these fundamental concepts, instead of attending to previously made recommendations, the ministry is spending time feeding us bread crumbs in education and then telling us it's dinner. It's performative nonsense, and it's a cover up campaign to save money in which children are negatively impacted. Your children, our children, they deserve better. You will hear folks say inclusion without support is abandonment, and that is precisely what is happening in classrooms across Ontario. Educators see it every day. To my colleagues in education, I see you working so hard, and I want you to know that our work matters, but I also want you to know you are not solely responsible for propping up an underfunded system. I know you want to do more for students, but you are not given the time, the space, nor the resources to do so. And I hope you know that. Hope is a fascinating feeling and cognitive process. And if I'm honest, my hope has shifted over time. I no longer hope that if the ministry simply knew better, it would do better. That time has passed. No longer can we let the limitations of this ongoing lack of funding define the value and the worth of children in Ontario. Here is where my hope lies, though now in this policy papers, clear and thoughtful recommendations in the continued dialogue and action among stakeholders, and I hope we continue to advocate for our students so that everybody has what they need in order to be successful for who they are and to be safe and to learn. Thank you.
6
00:17:00,230 --> 00:17:23,540
Thank you, Jennifer, it's not just educators who feel the impact. Families face barriers to accessing essential community programs, and many watch their children struggle in a system that is failing them at every turn. Kate Dudley-Logue, Vice President of Community Outreach at the Ontario Autism Coalition, joins us to share a community perspective. Kate.
7
00:17:23,000 --> 00:22:03,200
Good morning, and thank you to ETFO for putting this important piece of work together and inviting the Ontario Autism Coalition to participate in today's press conference. As many of you here are likely aware, the OAC has been very concerned with systemic issues that have placed special education under significant strain for many years now. Repeated policy failures have left our most vulnerable students faltering under an extreme lack of resources and funding. If we are being honest, this has become more of a crisis than a strain. Students with special education needs are falling through the cracks at alarming rates, and in many cases, are simply not accessing education at all. The OAC has a large membership of over 26,000 our community is very engaged, and we hear stories daily about the shortcomings and inability students face when trying to access spec ed programming in Ontario that is safe and meaningful, we've brought numerous stories to Queen's Park and to the media to highlight a system that is not only failing students with disabilities, but is often dangerous to these students. Children with disabilities, eloping school property being excluded daily and neglect that has gone so far that tragically, a student with complex disabilities died last year after being left alone in a classroom for hours. This past year, the OAC embarked on a survey asking families of students with disabilities pertinent questions about their kids experiences with special education in Ontario during the 2023-2024 school year. The results were distressing, and they track with everything that ETFO is addressing in this report here today. Some of the data we collected showed that half of families do not feel that their children are actually safe at school or are receiving a meaningful education. And perhaps the largest example of the lack of supports is the rising level of exclusions that are faced by students with disabilities. 6% of families report that their children experienced full exclusion during the 2023-24 school year, the primary reason they were given was that the school did not have the needed resources to keep the student safe and supported. It is also becoming normalized that students with disabilities do not attend school full time. With 19% of families reporting that their kids are on a modified schedule, the majority of whom are only at school for one to three hours a day. Again, the most cited reason being that the school lacked the resources to keep the children safe. Every year, more school boards are announcing cuts to their special education classrooms that they offer, with some boards moving to what's called a full inclusion model. Most recently, this is being proposed at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, where they are recommending that 39 special education classrooms be cut, while the OAC believes that inclusion is absolutely in the best interest of many students when proper supports are in place, it is clear that those supports do not exist due to the lack of commitment and funding from the Ministry of Education. As ETFO states in this report, the inclusion model is not working. Not only are smaller, quieter classrooms necessary for some students with the most complex needs, but the supports simply are not there in mainstream classrooms to foster success for those students who could actually benefit from integration. And this needs to change. In closing, the OAC stands firmly with educators who are really doing the best they can with what little resources they're being given. Make no mistake, the resource shortages and systemic gaps that undermine special education in Ontario are not just problematic for disabled students who have a right to a fulsome needs based education, but also to educators and to every other student in our mainstream classrooms. We support ETFO's recommendations as actions that must be taken in order to fix our fundamentally broken special education system. Ontario must do better. Thank you.
8
00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:29,010
Thank you, Kate. Our final speaker this morning is Joanna Conrad. A mother of three children, one of whom has special needs and an advisory member of the Greater Essex County District School Board's Special Education Advisory Committee, SEAC, representing up about down a local organization that supports families who have a loved one with Down syndrome, Joanna.
9
00:22:30,290 --> 00:45:09,980
When my daughter was born 10 years ago, she was the first person with Down syndrome I'd ever met. I had less than 24 hours of pure joy before fear took over. Fear of the unknown, of what her future would look like, of how the world would treat her. Although a diagnosis cannot predict the depth of love a parent has for their child, a diagnosis does matter. It is the key to accessing the right supports, whether for speech and language, reading, writing or math. It allows educators to understand a child's needs and provide the interventions necessary for success. Yet we are moving in the wrong direction. The Board and the ministry have shifted away from formally identifying students, opting instead for tiered supports. That means fewer students will be recognized as needing special education, but the reality is that the number of students who actually need support is not decreasing, it's increasing. The numbers are being buried, but the struggle remains. So my journey as a mother quickly became a crash course in advocacy, a roller coaster ride of hope and heartbreak and sadly, the most terrifying drops have been in the world of education. When my daughter started school, I learned the hard truth, the system wasn't built for her. Navigating it required strategy, persistence and a fight I wasn't prepared for, but one I couldn't walk away from. There was a moment when I realized just how little value was placed on my daughter's education, and she's not alone. Across schools, students with disabilities are missing critical days of learning, not because they're sick, but because there aren't enough staff or supports in place to meet their needs, the best way I can describe this experience is to ask you to imagine having a terminal illness and being denied treatment, the helplessness, the panic, the knowledge that time is slipping away. That's what it feels like to watch your child lose the years of learning, knowing that the system is failing them and knowing that the people with the power to change it are simply not doing enough. And let's be clear, this isn't about blaming teachers. Teachers are overworked, under supported and drowning in impossible expectations. Special Education funding is slashed, staff are burnt out, and students are slipping through the cracks. Decisions are being made behind closed doors, without transparency, without logic and without consulting the families they impact. Specialized programs that provide a critical bridge between inclusive classrooms and specialized settings are being cut. Assessments are delayed for years. IEPs cannot be followed. Special Education is being watered down into consultative services, which is really just a fancy way of saying teachers are given more responsibilities with fewer resources. How does that help anyone? if those in power had a child with a disability, I guarantee they would make or they would take a much closer look at funding or lack thereof, because this isn't just about students with disabilities. Underfunding special education affects every child in a classroom when supports aren't in place, learning suffers. Teachers burn out, the whole system breaks down, and we're watching it happen in real time. And this is also not just an educational issue. It's a societal one. We can choose to invest in students now, or we can pay the price later, when the same students, unsupported and unprepared, become adults left behind by society. When my daughter was born, I made her a promise. That promise has turned into a mission, not just for her, but for every child whose parents don't know how to fight or don't even realize that they have to. I want those parents to know that I see you, I hear you, and I'm fighting for your child too, because our children they deserve better, and I will not stop fighting until they get it. Thank you.
10
00:26:50,780 --> 00:48:04,160
Thank you. Joanna. Supporting children with disabilities in elementary school is essential for the economic and social health of Ontario, yet the reality in our schools tells a different story. The right to an education that enables every child to reach their full potential is not just a promise, it is the law, but this government has failed to uphold the law, systemically failing students, educators, education workers, and families. Our comprehensive Promises Unfulfilled position paper, available for download at etfo.ca, explores the history of special education in Ontario, the challenges we face today and the concrete steps the provincial government must take to finally deliver on the promise of an education system that serves all students, including those with disabilities. The Ford government must do better, and we won't stop until they do. Thank you.
11
01:00:05,230 --> 01:00:18,970
You've been listening to a press conference for ETFO's release of promises unfulfilled, addressing the special education crisis in Ontario. You can download the document at etfo.ca in the publications section. Thank you for listening. I'm Meagan Perry.
