It was Chantelle Bissaillion’s worst nightmare on Monday when a school official arrived at her home just before noon looking for her daughter Amelia, whom she had brought to school that morning.
The Picton, Ont., parent and her husband then learned their nine-year-old — who has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) — had gone missing during morning recess and that police were involved in a search.
While a neighbour searching town ultimately found and brought Amelia home in the early afternoon, Bissaillion, a mother of three, remains upset and shaken.
“You trust these schools to take your kid from the age of three, sometimes four … and they’re supposed to be safe,” she said. “How can I send [my kids] back to school now?”
Elopement, when an autistic person runs or wanders away from caregivers or a safe location, is a common school safety consideration.
Yet advocates and experts say this week’s incident puts the spotlight on inadequate in-school support of Ontario students with disabilities, with patchy delivery of special education leading to unsafe situations and students excluded from meaningful learning.
Didn’t qualify for 1-1 support
Despite sharing with Amelia’s school last March her diagnosis and doctor’s assessment — which called for one-on-one support at school — Bissaillion said she was told her child didn’t meet the requirements for an educational assistant (EA) because she was deemed high-functioning.
Instead, Bissaillion said Amelia’s school administrators suggested “emotional regulation check-ins” with her teacher and noted the child could “walk the halls by herself to calm down” whenever she felt she needed a break.
The boy was playing outside with classmates when he ran into the woods behind the school. He was found safely about 30 minutes later but his mother says there should be more safeguards to protect him. The CBC’s Frances Willick has the story.
Amelia didn’t realize leaving would create such an uproar, Bissaillion said, and described to her mom feeling an urge to leave school — one with about 1,000 students from kindergarten through Gr. 12 — and she did so, intending to walk home.
The Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board takes “every measure possible to ensure a secure environment and respond with immediate, co-ordinated action whenever concerns arise,” said Tina Elliott, superintendent of education.
For students with a history of elopement, HPEDSB schools have “tailored safety plans and supports,” she said, with principals responsible for ensuring they’re in place.
Elliott added that outside medical assessments may play a part in considerations for in-school supports, but that staff placements depend on criteria and options from the board and school.
Families worry about student safety
Elopement isn’t something isolated, but a safety issue that’s regularly challenging Ontario schools, according to Kate Dudley Logue, an Ottawa parent of two school-aged autistic children, a vice-president of the Ontario Autism Coalition and chair of its education working group.
The coalition is slated to release its most recent education survey next week, which includes perspectives from families of autistic students and those with disabilities more broadly, from 64 school boards across Ontario.
More than half of the respondents said they worry about their child’s safety at school to some degree. Nearly three-quarters of the families surveyed reported their child experiencing one or more safety concerns during the 2024-2025 school year, with bullying and elopement being the most frequent.
School boards across Ontario have said they’ve spent beyond what the province has allocated to deliver and support special education. When so many surpass that allocation, Dudley Logue says, it indicates they’re not getting enough to safely or meaningfully support students in the first place.
Despite increased provincial funding, only about a quarter of kids registered for the Ontario Autism Program are receiving funding for core clinical services, a figure that has remained relatively unchanged for the past year and a half. Meanwhile, the number of kids registering with the program continues to grow.
“They’re having to find funding and take it from other [areas] or just go over budget in order to meet needs,” she said.
Even then, schools are all too often seeing elopements and other safety issues, she said, along with “a ridiculous amount of exclusions,” where students with disabilities are placed on modified schedules or only allowed to attend part-time due to lack of support.
“When you talk about school, you want to talk about achievement, you want to about kids thriving…. We’re talking about basics: safety and making sure that they’re getting through their days — [but] many of them are not there at all,” Dudley Logue said.
Spotty data collection and tracking — as well as public access to this information — is another major concern, she said.
CBC News reached out to the Ontario Ministry of Education for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Inconsistent supports across school boards
Special education support is delivered differently across Ontario for a host of reasons, says Monique Somma, an associate professor at Brock University who researches inclusion and special education.
For one, Ontario lacks a specific special education strategy for boards to follow, she said.
She points to school boards’ autonomy over how to spend funding as another reason for the inconsistency: While one may offer self-contained special education classrooms, another might instead hire more EAs for classes mixing students with and without disabilities.
Education is costly at its core, Somma says, and special education funding (based on the number of students diagnosed) typically doesn’t go far enough.
A student may need one-on-one support, but “the government’s not necessarily saying, ‘Here’s $70,000 to pay for an EA,'” she said, adding that a high number of students without an official diagnosis, but require additional support regardless, is another complicating factor.
In general, public schools continue to deliver education through a relatively rigid model, she said, which can ultimately be a barrier.
“It’s challenging for teachers who are trying, or schools who are doing, innovative things to support diverse learners without having that structure or support from above.”
Somma thinks waking policy-makers up to the realities students with disabilities face daily can have an impact, helping them “recognize these are things that are happening — and they’re not happening because teachers don’t care about kids or because schools refuse to provide support.”
Back in Picton, Amelia’s mom feels stuck in her current situation.
“We’re kind of stuck in the middle where the school’s not going to give us what we need for her, but then I can’t stay at home and homeschool her,” Bessaillion said.
“We don’t know what else to do.”
