(Canada) Ont: "Cash-strapped" district removes aides from SPED buses; parents alarmed
- The end of childhood
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Nov 1, 2025, London Free Press: ‘Dangerous’: Parents decry end of bus monitors for special-needs kids
The cash-strapped Thames Valley District school board eliminated a bus monitor for an Ilderton teen without any notice
Ever since she was in junior kindergarten, 18-year-old Olivia McIntosh has boarded a special-needs bus with the help of a bus monitor.
Now in Grade 12, Olivia – who has cerebral palsy, a seizure disorder and is nonverbal – must ride the bus without one, creating a situation her mother Ashlie McIntosh calls “dangerous.”
The cash-strapped Thames Valley District school board eliminated bus monitors on her daughters’ route that takes her from Ilderton to a developmental program at Medway high school, without any notice at the beginning of school year.
“This year nothing – just a bus driver,” said McIntosh. “It was a kick in the gut to all of us (with children on the bus). Not one piece of communication, not one.”
What that means, she said, is a 25-minute ride “with no eyes on them.”
“(The bus driver) has to make a choice: either he looks at the road or looks at the kids. Either way, we’re damned,” McIntosh said.
The Thames Valley District school board sent a statement in response to several questions from The Free Press, including whether any bus monitors remain at the board.
The statement didn’t answer the question, but said schools and bus companies employ several strategies to ensure transportation is as safe as possible for students. . . .
“While no one on the bus can give her meds, at least the monitor can give heads-up that she’s having a seizure,” Ashlie McIntosh said. “She sits in her wheelchair; she could vomit, she could choke.” . . .
“It’s the worst experience I ever had, and I have had to advocate for my child for the last 18 years,” McIntosh said. “No one has an answer.”
Sharrie Hennessy, whose daughter Hailey has Down syndrome and also used to ride a special-needs bus to Medway, said she no longer allows her child to take it.
“I have pulled my daughter off the bus. I cannot consciously put my daughter on the bus knowing if something happened, I could not forgive myself,” she said.
Hennessy said parents of children with special needs “have to advocate for everything.” . . .
In April, Education Minister Paul Calandra placed the Thames Valley board under provincial supervision, following an audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
The audit was launched by the Education Ministry after a $38,000, three-day retreat in Toronto that was attended by former education director Mark Fisher and 17 senior staff in August 2024.
The audit found the board’s financial health had deteriorated from a $3.5-million surplus in 2020-21 to a $17.3-million deficit in 2023-24. In July, the deficit was reported to have ballooned to $32 million.
“The supervisor at TVDSB is now taking the action needed to restore fiscal responsibility, ensure long-term financial stability, and make sure funding goes where it belongs, directly into classrooms to support students and teachers,” Calandra said in a statement to The Free Press in July.
Under the supervision order, Thames Valley trustees have been powerless, and many have blamed the Education Ministry for the deficit, citing chronic underfunding.
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