Across Ontario, parents are watching specialized classrooms disappear. As supports shrink and staffing levels decrease, children with disabilities are being left behind. Students with disabilities and learning challenges are being abandoned as Ontario education suffers from underfunding and slow, creeping privatization.
Cuts aren’t “investments”
The Ford government has repeatedly touted its “historic investments in education,” but the government’s projected 2026-2027 education budget increase of just 1% is well below inflation and does nothing to address the urgent challenges faced by students, families, and education workers. Part of the justification for the budget (and the hundreds of layoffs in boards such as the Toronto District School Board and the Peel District School Board) has been massive projected enrolment declines. However, even when those projections are accounted for, the budget is once again asking educators to do more with less.
One such example is a $56.2 million cut to the Classroom Staffing Fund. The fund supports the majority of in-classroom staffing costs and includes educators such as teachers, Early Childhood Educators, and Educational Assistants. When we talk about “resources” that support students (and especially those with special education needs), we are talking about real humans — the ones who do the hard work of educating students and keeping classrooms running. At a time when schools are struggling with chronic understaffing, increasing student needs, burnout, and teacher shortages, these cuts will only make these challenges worse. Combined with the shameful 0.1% increase to Special Education funding (laughably below inflation), the cut to the Classroom Staffing Fund will put school boards in ever tougher situations as they try to meet student needs in their communities.
Nothing “inclusive” about ignoring students’ needs
This is not an accident, but rather the outcome of a political project that treats public education as a cost to be managed rather than a social good. Recent reports show that nearly every Ontario school board is spending more on special education than they receive from the province as special education enrollment outpaces general enrollment. This is the result of a system that is increasingly built around rationing support rather than adequately providing it.
The government has tried to frame many of their Special Education changes (for example, closing congregated classes and other specialized programs) using the language of “inclusion,” but the reality is quite different. In theory, classrooms that were properly funded and staffed could include many students with various needs and exceptionalities, but as it is students are being “included” into mainstream classes without the resources to support them.
Inclusion without support is abandonment. The Ontario government has abandoned these students in so many ways. They are increasingly placed into mainstream classrooms without the Educational Assistants, child and youth workers, psychologists, or Special Education resource teachers required to support them.
Fund the frontlines by painting the province purple
For parents in Ontario, the consequences are devastating. The result of underfunding has led to a creeping privatization where parents of children with disabilities are expected to leave work to manage shortened school days, fight for assessments that take years, navigate impossible waitlists, pay for private therapists and other services, and act as full-time advocates to secure basic accommodations. The Ford government’s underfunding of education, specifically Special Education, has led to a crisis in Ontario’s schools while laying the basis for further privatization — the less effective public schools are, the more incentive parents and families have to look beyond the public sector, and the more students leave for the private sector, the more incentive the government has to keep slashing public education.
To reverse this, we need to fight for every job, and we need to support the education workers that are fighting to fund the frontlines. One such opportunity is on June 6, when OSBCU education workers will be “painting the province purple” as they canvas in their local communities for the supports students need. Find an action by clicking here and join education workers in their fight to save public education — for our children and for the future of our province.
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