A prominent disability advocate says the Ford government’s decision to stop livestreaming meetings at the school boards it has taken over is “exceedingly troubling and undemocratic.”
Recently, the Ministry of Education instructed supervisors at major school boards like Toronto public, Ottawa-Carleton and Dufferin-Peel Catholic to stop broadcasting their meetings online.
At Toronto District School Board, one of the meetings impacted was the Special Education Advisory Committee, chaired by disability advocate David Lepofsky.
He said livestreaming the meetings was a vital service that particularly benefitted the parents of children with disabilities or special educational needs.
Lepofsky said parents have, for years, tuned into the online broadcasts of the meetings to understand what’s happening at a board level for their children when they’re too busy to attend.
The committee meets from 7 to 9 p.m. during the week when many are getting their children ready for bed. It discusses issues and accommodations for special education at TDSB schools.
“We’ve heard back from parents about how many of them feel isolated and really stressed out trying to advocate for their children,” Lepofsky said. “When they tune into our meetings, they find out they’re not alone.”
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A spokesperson for the Minister of Education said the move was not about cutting out parents, but stopping people without children in the board tuning into meetings for unrelated advocacy campaigns.
“I made this decision to maintain meetings that are productive, professional, and focused on improving student success and achievement, rather than serving as a forum for political commentary,” a statement attributed to Minister Paul Calandra said.
“At the same time, I ordered all meetings to remain open to the public with hybrid participation options with public posting of agendas, minutes, and decisions.”
That response, Lepofsky said, has him more concerned than when he first found out the meetings weren’t going to be livestreamed.
He said his concern now is not just that a cost-cutting drive has inadvertently damaged access for parents of children with disabilities, but that it is actually a concerted effort to clamp down on criticism.
“This is no justification for hampering the voices of parents of students with disabilities/special education needs,” he wrote in a statement.
“All the discussions at the meetings of TDSB’s SEAC over the past ten years have been focused solely on what is needed to advance student success for students with disabilities/special education needs.”
The government said parents could continue to appear remotely at meetings through hybrid Zoom calls, but would no longer be able to watch them online if they’re not participating.
“Are they afraid?” Lepofsky added. “Now that they’re in charge of running the school board, are they concerned that there be no platform for parents of students with disabilities to be able to air publicly their concern?”
The move comes as Calandra undertakes a potentially massive shakeup of how school boards operate, following the takeover of several in the spring.
Supervisors are now in charge of running those boards instead of the trustees, who the government is considering abolishing altogether in some cases.
Lepofsky said he feared the livestreaming issue could be a flavour of what’s to come after the shakeup.
“Before they ousted the TDSB trustees, parents had multiple forums in public where they could raise concerns,” he said.
“Now, all of those have been wiped out with the stroke of a pen at the end of June. And all that’s left as a place for our issues to get pressed is the Special Education Advisory Committee. And they turned off the switch, preventing us from livestreaming.”
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