Ontario principals have the power to kick special-needs kids out of school indefinitely if they can’t get the help they need.

Unlike suspensions or expulsions, also permitted by Ontario’s Education Act, “exclusions” have no time limit. Critics charge there is too little oversight from school boards, and the education ministry doesn’t track how often principals use this power. Education experts warn these exclusions can put vulnerable children at a disadvantage.

In some cases, special-needs children who present safety issues have been excluded from school for weeks. In one case, the Star discovered a Grade 4 boy was out of school for at least two and a half months.

Tyler Munro, whose son A.J. has been diagnosed with a learning disability and ADHD, claims A.J.’s exclusion from St. Norbert Catholic School was “a way of avoiding a child with a disability.” Munro says his son was stuck at home while the Toronto Catholic District School Board proposed a plan to deal with him — a move that took two meetings scheduled a month apart to figure out.

The TCDSB would not comment directly on A.J.’s case, citing privacy laws.

The government doesn’t set limits on how long principals may “refuse to admit” a student, as the Act puts it, nor does it track how often the power is used or require schools to log this data, an education ministry spokesperson told the Star.

Marilyn Dolmage, an educational consultant who has worked with three exclusion cases, including A.J.’s, over the past two years, described exclusions as an “unchecked principal’s prerogative.”

“They just have to say, ‘There is a safety concern and I don’t want the child on school property,’ ” she said. “If you are trying to get rid of the kid, this is how you do it.”

Speaking generally, TCDSB spokesperson John Yan emphasized the policy is not punitive. The board began voluntarily tracking exclusions system-wide in 2013. Ten were issued last year.

“If a student has, out of no fault of their own, certain outbursts, like an autistic child or someone on the spectrum, you need to sometimes step back and see what is working and what is not,” he said.

Brian Serafini, president of the Ontario Principals’ Council, which represents 5,300 public school principals and vice-principals, says exclusions are a “last resort” meant to give school staff and community agencies time to develop a plan that meets the excluded student’s needs.

“I look at it like a stop-gap to make sure the students have a support system in place,” he said. While Serafini has not personally issued an exclusion himself, he is aware of colleagues who have. Typically, the excluded student remains at home while support services are arranged.

“If the supports are not in place, you don’t want the student in school and set up to fail,” he said. “You want the conditions in place for them to be successful.”

Parents of excluded children told the Star they were troubled at how open-ended the measure could be. Unlike suspensions, which legally can’t run more than 20 days, the law doesn’t detail how long an exclusion may continue.

A.J. Munro was in Grade 4 at North York’s St. Norbert Catholic School when he was excluded in November 2013. His family says the principal decided to deny the 9-year-old further access to the school after he allegedly threatened the principal numerous times, upon returning from a three-day suspension for hitting a child and youth worker.

A series of emails obtained by the Star shows A.J.’s parents rejected the TCDSB’s initial offer of an alternative: that he attend a specialized segregated program at Madonna Catholic Secondary School, an all-girls high school.

The TCDSB invited A.J. back to the classroom five and a half months later. This fresh start, however, would begin at a different school.

“(A.J.) still tells me that he misses his friends because he didn’t go back to the same school,” Munro said. “He had teachers he really liked there.”

Sherri Deschamps, a former teacher who lives outside Windsor, told the Star her adopted son, Alexander, 8, who suffers from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, was excluded from Anderdon Public School in January 2014 after he was accused of inappropriately touching a female student on the bus.

The exclusion, according to Deschamps, lasted two and a half months. Alexander was allowed to return on several conditions, including being transferred to another school.

“It put a lot of our stress on our family because there was so much unknown,” she said. “I did not even know this could happen to a child.”

A 2014 People for Education survey showed nearly half of Ontario elementary school principals and 40 per cent of secondary school principals have at some point “recommended students not attend school for at least some period of time.” Most principals attributed the practice to safety concerns.

Nick Scarfo, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education who specializes in education law, suggested better monitoring could help the ministry learn from exclusions.

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“The benefits of tracking this data could include ministry and school initiatives to provide training and professional development workshops,” he said. “It could also be used to review re-entry plans and procedures for students who have been excluded from school.”

Robert Lattanzio, executive director of ARCH Disability Law Centre, suggested that cutbacks in provincial funding for special-needs resources have unfairly placed students with disabilities and behaviour issues in the policy’s crosshairs. Lattanzio’s legal clinic has dealt with several exclusion-related cases, the “most disturbing” of which lasted upwards of a year.