The kids nobody is bargaining for

Where things actually stand

Before anything else: what has happened, and what has not.

Status as of November 3, 2026: there is no Ontario teachers strike.

November 3, 2026 review: all five central unions have scheduled member strike votes: CUPE-OSBCU November 4–18, 2026, OSSTF/FEESO November 6–16, 2026, ETFO November 9–18, 2026, OECTA November 12–13, 2026, and AEFO teaching staff November 16–17, 2026. These are voting windows, not strike dates. OSBCU’s October 28 bulletin says the education-worker scope hearings finished that day, that the Labour Board proposed mediation for November 2 (no source reports whether it was held or its outcome), and that it expects decisions one to two weeks after the final hearing dates; that is the union’s account and expectation. No completed strike-vote result, strike start date or published scope ruling is established in the reviewed updates. Check your own board and bargaining-unit notices for local arrangements. This tracker is not a census of every central or local table. Contracts expired August 31, 2026, but expiry alone does not permit a strike: conciliation, a no-board report, a countdown and a strike vote must come first under Ontario law. If a strike does happen, your autistic child’s right to accommodation does not pause. Government, school boards and unions each have a legal duty to plan for continued access. This page covers that duty, what to do now, and the record from Ontario’s last education dispute. For vote dates, table-by-table status and the labour board scope case, use the tracker.

See the live bargaining tracker, table by table →

Why special education is at the centre

This is not a wage dispute with a special education footnote. The system was already failing before anyone served notice.

The unions’ joint statement lists growing student needs, violence in schools, inadequate supports for students with special education needs, large class sizes and insufficient staffing. Set that alongside what Ontario’s own Auditor General found.

Audit period

The Auditor General’s special report on special education, released May 12, 2026, examined 2019/20 - 2024/25.

Educational assistant absences

Across the boards sampled, educational assistant absences went unfilled 49-72% of the time.

Special education spending

Boards spent $398M more on special education than they received.

Recommendations

The audit made 15 recommendations: 13 agreed by the Ministry and selected boards · 2 disagreed by the Ministry.

Ontario Auditor General’s special report on special education | Updated May 12, 2026

That is the baseline. Not the crisis scenario, but the ordinary operating state of the system on a day when nobody is on strike. Every parent of a disabled student in this province already knows what an unfilled EA absence means, because they have already lived it: the phone call, the early pickup, the shortened day that quietly becomes permanent.

So when bargaining is described as a fight over class size and wages, understand what is actually on the table. The staffing levels being negotiated are the staffing levels that determine whether a disabled child can attend school at all.

Read our full breakdown of the Auditor General’s findings →

What the money actually did

Both sides argue about funding, so it is worth going to the one body that answers to neither. The Financial Accountability Office is an independent, non-partisan officer of the Legislative Assembly.

Reported funding level

In its Ministry of Education: 2026 Spending Plan Review (September 23, 2026), it reported that real per-student provincial operating funding in 2024-25 was $15,128, the lowest level over the last 10 years. This replaces the figures in its 2025 review, which used a different base year.

Projected funding

It projects $14,775 by 2028-29, under the 2026 budget spending plan.

Financial Accountability Office, Ministry of Education: 2026 Spending Plan Review | Updated 2026-11-03

The FAO's table prints 2018-19 as "5,543", which its own text rules out, so that year is left out.

Read the chart carefully, because the honest version is less tidy than either side would like. Funding did not fall every year. It rose in 2020-21, 2023-24, 2025-26. What the FAO identifies is a decade low reached in 2024-25, at $15,128 per student in constant dollars, and a projection that it falls again to $14,775 by 2028-29. The pale outlined columns are a forecast, not an outcome, and should be read as one.

The unions put a cumulative figure on this. The Globe and Mail reported the education unions’ estimate of $6.4 billion in cumulative underfunding since 2018; the Ontario School Board Council of Unions puts it at $6.5 billion. Those are the claimants’ own numbers, they do not agree with each other, and we have not independently verified either. We publish them as what the unions say, next to what the budget office found, and leave the reader to weigh them.

What the law requires if there is job action

This is the part almost nobody reports, and it is the part that matters most.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission publishes a fact sheet specifically about equal access to education for students with disabilities during strikes. Its position is not ambiguous.

Students with disabilities have a Code-protected right to equal treatment in education under section 1 of the Ontario Human Rights Code, and the duty to accommodate under section 17 continues to apply during a work stoppage. Responsibility is shared: government, school boards and unions are each expected to take an active role as accommodation partners, and to work cooperatively to put contingency plans in place so that students with disabilities can continue to attend school and receive appropriate accommodation.

Read that twice, because it disposes of the answer most parents will be given. “We can’t, because of the collective agreement” is not a lawful reason to stop accommodating a disabled child. Neither is “everyone is affected equally.” Withdrawing supports that only disabled students rely on does not affect everyone equally. That is the entire point.

None of this is an argument against the right to strike, which is constitutionally protected. It is an argument that the duty to accommodate runs alongside it, and that all three parties already know this.

Get your school’s continuity plan in writing (free tool) →

The record

Every claim on this site carries a document. Here is the documented record going into this round of bargaining.

Ontario has been here before, and the record of how the province handled the last education dispute is a matter of public legislative history rather than interpretation.

In November 2022, the province passed the Keeping Students in Class Act, which imposed a contract on education workers, prohibited a strike, and pre-emptively invoked section 33 of the Charter (the notwithstanding clause) while also overriding the Human Rights Code. It was repealed within two weeks and deemed never to have been in force. Bill 124, which capped public-sector compensation, was found to infringe the Charter in Ontario English Catholic Teachers Assoc. v His Majesty, 2022 ONSC 6658, upheld in part on appeal in 2024 ONCA 101, and repealed in full in February 2024.

We are not predicting a repeat. We are noting that a Human Rights Code override has been used in this province, in this sector, within living memory of the families reading this page, and that the accommodation rights described above were among the things overridden.

Browse the full accountability record, with every source document →

Read our investigation into who is arguing to fund private schools, including what we looked for and did not find →

Where End The Wait Ontario stands

We are not a union and we are not the government. We represent families whose children are the subject of this dispute. But the evidence about what is happening in Ontario classrooms is not evenly balanced between the parties, and we will not pretend that it is.

Our position has four parts, and we hold all of them at once:

1. We stand with the educators and education workers. The people being asked to hold a class together with fewer hands are the same people who keep a disabled child in the room: the educational assistant, the resource teacher, the early childhood educator. Their central demands are smaller classes, more staffing, and real special education supports. The Auditor General’s May 12, 2026 report found exactly those things missing. When they bargain for staffing, they are bargaining for the conditions our children need to attend school at all.
2. We stand with the school boards absorbing the shortfall. Boards are not the villain of this story. They spent $398M more on special education than the province funded in 2023/24, while the Financial Accountability Office reports real per-student funding at $15,128, the lowest in ten years, and projects it to fall further. Boards are covering a gap the funding formula leaves behind.
3. The government made choices, and choices leave a record. The unions asked in March to begin bargaining early, to head off a September disruption; the request was not taken up. And within living memory, in this same sector, the province legislated a Human Rights Code override (the 2022 Keeping Students in Class Act) and capped compensation under Bill 124, which the courts struck down. Both were repealed. We record these as what happened, attributed and sourced. We do not claim to know anyone’s intent.
4. Disabled students are not the cost of the dispute, from anyone. Standing with educators does not mean signing away our children’s rights during job action. If there is a work stoppage, the duty to accommodate does not pause, and government, boards and unions are each an accommodation partner under the Human Rights Code. Solidarity and that guardrail are not in tension. They are the same commitment.

Everything we publish on this file will carry its source. Where a figure is a party’s claim rather than an established finding, we will say so, including when it is a claim we are sympathetic to.