PPM 145 and Disability Discipline in Ontario: What Schools Must Consider

If your child has a disability and has been suspended from an Ontario school for behavior related to that disability, the suspension may have been issued without completing the legal analysis the Education Act requires. This isn't a technical argument — it's a substantive protection that Ontario's discipline policy explicitly mandates, and most parents don't know it exists.

The Policy and Its Legal Basis

Policy/Program Memorandum 145 (PPM 145) is the Ontario Ministry of Education's directive governing progressive discipline. It requires school administrators to apply a graduated set of responses to student behavior, ranging from support interventions to formal suspension and expulsion. PPM 145 is not optional guidance — it is Ministry policy that all publicly funded school boards must follow.

Critically, PPM 145 operates in conjunction with Ontario Regulation 472/07, which specifies mandatory "mitigating and other factors" that administrators must consider before imposing a suspension.

The mandatory mitigating factors include:

• Whether the student was able to control their behavior at the time
• Whether the student was able to understand the foreseeable consequences of the behavior
• Whether the student's continuing presence in the school would create an unacceptable risk to the safety of any person

The regulation also requires other factors to be considered where they would mitigate the seriousness of the activity, including the student's history, whether progressive discipline has been used, whether disability-related harassment was involved, how suspension would affect ongoing education, and the student's age.

Before imposing a suspension or expulsion, the principal must take the applicable mitigating and other factors into account. For a student with a disability, that analysis should address relevant disability-related circumstances and the IEP where appropriate.

The Discipline-Accommodation Loop

The pattern that PPM 145 is designed to prevent looks like this:

1. Student has a disability-related behavioral need that is documented in their IEP
2. The IEP accommodations or EA support are not being consistently provided
3. Without the supports, the student's behavior escalates — meltdown, aggression, elopement, refusal
4. The school responds with a suspension
5. The cycle repeats without addressing the underlying unmet need

This pattern raises a serious compliance and human-rights concern. The school cannot fail to provide the accommodations required by the IEP and then ignore the effect of that failure when responding to the student's behavior.

PPM 145 and Ontario Regulation 472/07 require the principal to consider the applicable factors, including whether the student could control the behavior, understand its foreseeable consequences, and whether disability-related circumstances affected the incident.

The Supreme Court's Role: Moore v. British Columbia

PPM 145 doesn't exist in isolation. Its application is informed by the broader legal principle established by the Supreme Court of Canada in Moore v. British Columbia (Education) (2012) — a decision that applies across Canada, including Ontario.

The Court held that adequate special education is "not a dispensable luxury" but the "ramp" that provides students with disabilities equal access to the educational system. The practical implication for discipline: if a school has denied a student the ramp — failed to provide IEP accommodations, cut EA support, ignored behavioral needs — and then punishes the student for the behavior that emerges from being on the stairs without the ramp, the school has compounded a discriminatory failure with a punitive one.

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario may consider whether discipline was discriminatory and whether disability-related needs were accommodated.

What to Do If Your Child Was Suspended

Step 1: Request the documentation

Request the principal's discipline records and notes through the board's records-access process. Specifically request:

• The record of the mitigating factors analysis conducted under Reg 472/07
• Notes from the incident
• Any incident reports

If the board cannot show that the required factors were considered, that may support an appeal.

Step 2: Suspension appeal

Under the Education Act, parents can appeal a suspension to the school board by giving written notice to the designated superintendent within 10 school days of the start of the suspension. The appeal must be heard within 15 school days of the board receiving the notice, unless the parent agrees to an extension. An appeal based on the required factors not being considered is a substantive procedural basis for the appeal, not merely an emotional objection.

Step 3: IEP review meeting

Request an emergency IEP review to discuss the unmet needs that contributed to the behavioral incident. This meeting puts the board on notice that the accommodations were inadequate and creates a record of that inadequacy.

Step 4: Human Rights considerations

If the suspension was connected to a pattern of disability-related behavior stemming from unmet IEP needs, and if informal resolution doesn't address the underlying accommodation failure, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is the appropriate venue. The HRTO can adjudicate both the discriminatory discipline and the underlying accommodation failure.

Writing the PPM 145 Challenge Letter

An effective challenge to a suspension that failed to conduct the mitigating factors analysis looks like this:

"I am writing to formally appeal the suspension of [child's name] issued on [date]. Under PPM 145 and Ontario Regulation 472/07, the principal must take the applicable mitigating and other factors into account before imposing a suspension, including factors relevant to my child's disability-related needs. I am requesting written confirmation that this analysis was completed. If the board cannot show that the required factors were considered, please explain how the suspension complied with the Education Act and applicable policy."

This is factual, cites the correct authority, and demands a specific response. It is not aggressive — it is legally grounded.

The Broader Context: Discipline and Disability Data

Black students in Ontario are disproportionately suspended at higher rates than white students, and students with behavioral exceptionalities face suspension rates significantly above their share of the student population. These patterns suggest that PPM 145's mitigating factors protections are frequently not being applied as intended.

If your child is being suspended repeatedly for behaviors connected to their disability, the pattern itself is evidence that the school's behavior management approach is not addressing the underlying disability-related needs. The Ontario Special Ed Advocacy Playbook covers both the PPM 145 appeal process and the Human Rights framework for addressing discriminatory discipline patterns.

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