Latoya Aldridge felt like she was finally getting somewhere when she attended a meeting of her local school board’s Inner City Community Advisory Committee. Her two children have autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and she was heartbroken by how little support was available at school.
Her 16-year-old son is capable of getting honour-roll grades. He does just that when Aldridge shells out $650 for a private course, hires a tutor, or spends her evenings re-teaching him with additional support. But in classes at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), especially when his teachers were overworked, he sometimes barely passed.
“I really just wanted change,” Aldridge tells The Grind.
When Aldridge joined the TDSB committee about two years ago, she gained regular access to an elected trustee. Her requests, among them that someone help her son organize his assignments, were validated. And her committee passed a motion calling on the TDSB to investigate why kids with special needs were absent twice as often as kids without special needs.
“I really felt that we were moving in the right direction,” Aldridge says.
But when Premier Doug Ford’s government took over the TDSB in June, the committee was disbanded. The trustees who supported Aldridge were locked out of their email accounts and offices. And the motion — one of the first tangible results she had won after years of advocacy — was gone.
Aldridge is one of the hundreds of thousands of parents across 579 schools who have been told to contact one man — the provincially-appointed school board supervisor Rohit Gupta — with concerns about their children’s education.
Now, her only option is “emailing the supervisor and getting a very generic response that doesn’t really speak to the situation.”
Aldridge isn’t the only one raising the alarm. Parents who have pushed for better air quality in classrooms or suggested changes to equity funding formulas have also seen progress screech to a halt.
One mother whom The Grind spoke to tried contacting TDSB staff, the Ministry of Education, the provincial ombudsman and her MPP, but didn’t receive any help.
Motions brought by parents became TDSB policy
Sara Ehrhardt, the former elected trustee for Toronto–Danforth, says that she was in touch with parents in her ward by phone, text and email every single day before the takeover.
She and her colleagues often brought forth motions on issues raised by parents. When those motions passed, they were essentially adopted as TDSB policy.
For example, Ehrhardt brought a motion to the board in 2023 about reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses like influenza and COVID-19 in schools. Because of the motion, the TDSB chair called on the Ontario government for dedicated funding to reduce the spread of illnesses. Ehrhardt’s motion also required the board’s director to present a report on school ventilation.
“I would move motions like that, and the board would vote, and then we would take an action,” Ehrhardt explains. “We would advocate at all orders of government — city budget processes, provincial budget processes, federal budget processes — on the need for funding to support updating and modernizing schools, which included clean air.”
Scarborough mom Louise Hidinger, whose son contracted COVID-19 at school, says Ehrhardt’s motion was the first real progress on air quality she’d seen since 2021. “We had tried advocating on this and were not getting anywhere. So, having a trustee who understands parents’ concerns is extremely important,” she says.
In another example, following community advocacy, the TDSB voted to include anti-Palestinian racism as part of its Combating Hate and Racism Student Learning Strategy, and the chair of the TDSB sent a letter urging Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra to take it seriously.
Mom who escalated concerns got no help
Hidinger and another parent, Heather Pun, work together as the group Clean Indoor Air Toronto. They’re still trying to get the TDSB to update a regulation which would require high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters in classrooms to be turned on. Many are sitting unused.
Even before the trustees were removed, Pun had tried dealing with other TDSB staff directly. The staff said there are simply too many schools to enforce a HEPA policy, Pun tells The Grind.
So, after the trustees were removed this summer, Pun turned to the Ministry of Education. A staff member initially promised to provide clarity on the regulation, but then ghosted Pun’s follow-up calls and emails. Pun took it to the provincial ombudsman’s office, which said the issue was outside of its scope. Then, she tried her MPP, who was also unable to get any information from the ministry.
“It’s really concerning that when you get a promise from a ministry worker that they’re going to provide information for you, that they’re allowed to ignore you. And then any type of follow-up that’s supposed to be built into the system, like the ombudsman or your MPP, is also ignored, and there’s no recourse for parents at all,” Pun says.
“That part is really frustrating, but it’s also kind of frightening, because this is health and safety equipment, and it shouldn’t be optional.”
Parent’s advocacy could have made funding formula fairer
East-end mom Valerie Laurie had been pushing for changes to a funding formula that designates which schools qualify for extra support. She got involved at her kids’ school in 2020 when it was about to lose its “model school” status.
Model schools receive extra funding and programs such as dental clinics and free winter clothing. The schools are chosen based on a formula which ranks schools where more kids have single parents, parents on social assistance, or live in families with low incomes.
Laurie’s kids’ school, Blake Street Junior Public School, lost its status because of an influx of French-immersion students from more affluent neighbourhoods.
“I saw the impacts that it had on our school and our community that were detrimental,” Laurie says.
The situation revealed a flaw in the system. Students who come from outside neighbourhoods for programs like French immersion or gifted courses skew the demographics, and then the students who were already there — who need extra programs — lose them.
Laurie joined the same committee as Aldridge, the Inner City Community Advisory Committee, which adopted a motion to review the funding formula for model-school status.
“It’s amazing when collective action from the community can move needles within the education system,” she says.
But now, Laurie is left to lean on the three committees the province has allowed to continue. “That mostly feels like screaming into the void,” she says. “It’s about putting things on record, rather than the community voice actually being heard.”
TDSB is now making changes unilaterally
Both she and Aldridge point out negative changes at the TDSB since the takeover.
In October, the board reverted to “merit-based” applications for specialized programs in subjects like the arts and math. The programs now require that students score above 70 per cent in most of their classes, rather than demonstrating an interest in the subject.
“If [students] don’t have access to technology or their parents are new immigrants, they won’t hit that threshold,” says Aldridge.
Laurie is disturbed that the board will soon install vape detectors in the bathrooms of four high schools. The vape detectors are part of a $30-million spend that the Ford government says will make schools safer.
Similar monitors in the United States were found to have microphones inside, which one 16-year-old hacker easily turned into eavesdropping devices.
“Yeah, like, that’s fucking bonkers,” Laurie tells The Grind. “You can quote that.”
This article appeared in the 2025 Dec – 2026 Jan issue.
