Each time Danica Ainger receives a call from her son Kylo’s school, her “heart drops.”
“When I pick up the phone, they go, ‘Don't worry, everything's okay,’ or they go, ‘Hey,’ and then I know I have to come pick him up,” said Ainger, whose son is in Grade 3 at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. “It’s traumatic having the school call you often because your child is in distress.”
Kylo was diagnosed with ADHD and autism.
For Ainger, calls from her son’s school have been occasional this year. She received one a couple of weeks ago. In past years, like when Kylo was in senior kindergarten or Grade 2, she received them up to three times a week.
Kylo experienced “sensory overload” and ended up on a modified schedule, just going to school for half-days “because of his being dysregulated and them not knowing how to handle it.”
“When I pick him up, there'd be like four or five adults in a room staring at him, and he'd be under a desk crying, or like spitting at them or something, because he obviously feels overwhelmed,” she said.
Things were better for Kylo in Grade 1, Ainger said. He had a “phenomenal” teacher who even made a “safe cave” in the classroom for him, she explained.
Although Kylo has tested above his grade level in many areas, Ainger said he’s “disconnected” because he “knows he’s behind” after missing so much school.
The Ottawa mom who runs a home daycare has hit hurdles even outside of the classroom.
“For a field trip, unless I can go, he can't go,” she said.
Ainger said she thinks having a dedicated educational assistant (EA) for Kylo who could provide him one-on-one support “would have made a massive difference.”
“I've had calls where it's been like, ‘Hey, can you pick him up? We don't have an EA this afternoon, so we're not going to be able to support him if anything happens,’” she said.
Ainger said all this has been “extremely hard on my mental health.”
“As a parent with a special needs kid, you're already feeling like a lot of time like you're failing, because you want to just make things easier for them and help them and you're trying the best you can, but you can only reach a certain limit,” she said. “But then to also have the people who are supposed to know what to do, who are supposed to be there … then almost be like, ‘Okay, well we give up, we can't do it, so here you deal with it.’”
Ainger’s experience is not unique, according to advocates for children with disabilities, who have been raising the alarm for years about kids being excluded from school. They believe that the Ministry of Education data showing an increase in the amount of time Ontario students are excluded from classrooms in recent years only scratch the surface of the problem.
The Education Act gives principals the power to “refuse to admit to the school or classroom a person whose presence in the school or classroom would in the principal’s judgment be detrimental to the physical or mental well-being of the pupils.”
But while boards refer to this section of the act as part of the formal process for barring students from attending school, advocates say informal or “soft exclusions” are happening regularly, including due to a lack of supports.
They’re calling on the province to require boards to track all types of exclusions, including the informal kind they say many families experience in the form of a phone call from the school asking them to pick up their child early, and to take steps to address the issue.
In 2022-23, 499 elementary and high school students were excluded for 11,776 days, according to ministry data obtained by The Trillium through the freedom of information process. Around 58 per cent, or 289 students, were receiving special education services.
This was up from the previous two years. In 2021-22, 410 students — 210 of whom were getting special education supports — were excluded for 8,427 days.
In 2020-21,160 students missed a total of 5,695 days of school. About 67 per cent, or 107 students, were receiving special education services.
The data, which were broken down by school board, were incomplete for 2023-24 as only 49 boards and school authorities had submitted data to the ministry as of October 2024.
For 2022-23, the boards reporting the highest number of total days students were excluded included the Greater Essex County District School Board (2,235 days), Grand Erie District School Board (1,671 days), Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (1,433 days) and Toronto District School Board (1,328 days).
The data were also broken down by the reason for the exclusion: behavioural concern, medical concern, mental health concern and others.
Several boards, including the Durham District School Board, the District School Board of Niagara, the Halton Catholic District School Board had no exclusions listed, according to the ministry data.
When asked about this, the DDSB, for example, said it has “a number of reporting pathways.”
'Tip of the iceberg'
“There's no way that those are the full amount of exclusions,” Kate Dudley-Logue, vice-president of community outreach for the Ontario Autism Coalition (OAC), said.
She said the data likely represents “hard exclusions,” where as a result of an incident a student is “put on what they call a ‘pause for safety' and told to stay home for an extended period while supports and a safety plan are put in place.”
Dudley-Logue said what she hears about most often are “soft exclusions" — calls made to parents saying something like, "You're going to have to come pick up your child, we don't have the supports in place, and they're having a hard time."
“Those are happening daily and in very large numbers,” she said. “There are literally families who just sit and wait by the phone because they know it's going to happen multiple times a week. “
An OAC survey on families’ experiences with special education in public schools — which included 429 responses covering children in 60 school boards for the 2023-24 school year — found six per cent of families said their children were "fully excluded" from school, so they didn't attend. More than a third said their children were "partially excluded," which could include the school asking the family to pick up their child early or the child not being able to participate in activities such as field trips.
Dudley-Logue said she’s heard from school boards that they “don't have a great tracking mechanism in order to explain these occurrences to the ministry.”
The Durham District School Board outlined a process it had for making formal exclusions. When asked about “soft exclusions,” it said, “When a student poses a significant risk of harm to themselves or others, we may ask the family to pick up their kids early to ensure their safety and well-being, or the safety of those around them.”
“Currently, DDSB does not provide a specific report to the Ministry of Education regarding these types of situations,” the board said, adding that students aren’t sent home due to staffing issues.
The Near North District School Board (NNDSB) said it doesn’t support the use of “soft exclusions.”
According to the 2023-24 data, students in the NNDSB missed more than 1,000 days of school that year. The previous year, it was 561 days.
“‘Soft’ exclusions are misleading; they generate issues with accurately capturing attendance on the register. All school boards in Ontario must account for a student when they are absent from school,” the board’s Safe Schools Team said in a statement.
As for why the board has higher exclusion data than some others, the NNDSB said, “It may be a result of other boards utilizing these ‘soft’ exclusions” and not completing the paperwork needed for formal exclusions.
The board added that in most exclusion cases, “the student has engaged in multiple situations that present great risk to themselves, their classmates and the staff” and are “not issued quickly.”
“They are taken very seriously and only utilized when the safety risk is so high that we are unable to mitigate it,” the board said.
Noting the use of “soft exclusions” by some boards, Dudley-Logue said, “It shouldn't be rocket science.” Schools should have a way to indicate on their attendance systems when a student is sent home due to insufficient supports, for example, she said.
David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, agreed. He has also been advocating for boards to use such a system, saying that the current code to indicate an absence could cover several reasons.
Like Dudley-Logue, Lepofsky also said the overall data is the “tip of the iceberg" and that families experiencing “soft exclusions” is a real issue.
“This isn't imaginary. This is a serious problem,” he said.
“It's a legitimate worry that refusals to admit are being used in some instances because of a belief there isn't enough funding for staff,” Lepofsky said. “If a principal were to say to parents of a student with a disability, ‘Your (education assistant) is sick today, so don't come in,’ I argue that's illegal, just illegal. They have a duty to accommodate students with disabilities.”
Gabriel Reznick, a staff lawyer at the ARCH Disability Law Centre, echoed the sentiment.
“The numbers themselves, even as low as they are, are so concerning,” said Reznick, noting the centre has dealt with cases of kids being excluded from school for more than a year. “(I) strongly believe that they're not accurately reflecting the picture of students not being in school.”
He said they constantly hear from parents “telling us that they have to, almost on a daily basis, pick their student with a disability up from school.”
Reznick said the centre’s efforts on exclusions have focused on supporting individual student cases and trying to encourage law reforms.
He said he doesn’t think the section of the Education Act used to exclude students was “intended to be used for the purpose that it's currently being used — that being to exclude students, specifically now to exclude students with disabilities.”
This is one thing, he said, that needs to change — “just the idea of using exclusions for students and more specifically … students with disabilities.”
The other issue, he said, is that the act doesn’t specifically outline what the appeals process for an exclusion is, making it the “wild west” amongst school boards.
In addition to addressing these issues, he questioned what the government is doing with the data it’s collecting on exclusions.
“The government has shown no willingness to ever deal with these issues, so what are they going to do with this information?” Reznick said. “Are they going to be willing to take some of this information, see that it's concerning, see that a lot of students are not in school and actually do something about it?”
Dudley-Logue agreed.
“It's pretty unconscionable to us that government has continued to not really care to find a solution,” she said. “There's really no bigger indication of the lack of support for students with disabilities in our schools than what's happening with these exclusions.”
The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board saw students miss more than 1,100 school days in 2023-24 due to exclusions. In 2022-23, it was 264 days. The board said there is a “shortage of intensive support programs and Education and Community Partnership Program (ECPP) classes in the community for students with treatment needs.”
“Waiting lists are extremely long and students with multiple areas of need can be disqualified for access by virtue of their diagnoses. Investment in this area would reduce the number of student exclusions,” the board said in a statement.
Joe Bell, superintendent of student well-being for the Greater Essex County District School Board, said an increase in mental health support in schools and in communities could help reduce exclusions, which he said are a “last resort.” He also called for more supports for “social-emotional and well-being supports in schools.”
Education Minister Paul Calandra’s office did not respond to questions before publication.
Kirsten Marcelin, whose 5-year-old son Régis has been diagnosed with autism, called for more transparency when it comes to exclusions.
“I think that some of these things are really swept under the carpet,” she said, adding that people get defensive when the term “exclusion” is used.
“If we were really transparent about it, parents would also be able to look at it and see what's happening and know … it's not just me,” she said, adding that having measures in place to properly report on exclusions and then address them is key.
“How are we going to move past this sort of institutionalized exclusion where it is okay to do this to kids? Like I think everybody needs to be able to learn regardless of the diagnosis,” she said.
Marcelin said Régis started junior kindergarten at the Durham District School Board in the fall of 2023, but had his first full day of school only in April 2024.
Until then, he was attending school for “bits and parts of the day,” sometimes staying for lunch.
She said they decided to keep Régis home since November, following a “classroom-clearing incident” and frequent calls from the school to pick him up.
“With the adequate support, he could have started full-day from Day 1, as opposed to all of these scenarios that he just couldn't navigate,” said Marcelin, adding that while the school really tried to “make it work,” they noticed several “micro-exclusions built into the day” where he wouldn’t participate in certain activities because his educational assistant was busy.
“And as a kid, by then, he sees that everybody stays at school, and he wanted to be there,” she said.
Explore the full dataset below.
-Data visualizations by Jessica Smith Cross
