‘He should still be here with us’: Family, advocates call for more school supports after autistic boy killed in Hamilton bus crash

The grieving parents of a Hamilton boy killed in a bus crash are urging Ontario to fix gaps in school supports for children with special needs.

A seven-year-old boy who died after being hit by the driver of a bus in downtown Hamilton last month would have been alive today had he been attending school full-time, says his father.

Chris Simao explained that for several weeks prior to the collision that took the life of his son Max he had been attending school for only half days as an educational assistant (EA) wasn’t available to work with him so he could be there for full days.

Max, who had autism and was non-verbal, and his mom Emily were on their way home from school on the afternoon of Dec. 11 when the boy slipped and was run over by a Hamilton Street Railway bus.

“Max should have been in school that day,” Simao said during a news conference Wednesday at Queen’s Park.

“We were told this would only be temporary modified schedule, just for a few weeks. Those weeks stretched into a month-and-a-half, and despite us repeatedly asking when Max would return to full day school, we were told it was being sorted out.”

Simao noted that he is not blaming the bus driver, nor his son’s school or board for what happened. He said the issue is the funding levels provided by the Ministry of Education for classroom supports for children with special needs.

“We’ve come to learn that exclusions like this are very common under funding that tends to affect students of special needs the most,” he said.

The Hamilton father of four joined politicians and the Ontario Autism Coalition (OAC) in speaking out about this issue, as he feels his family was “robbed and cheated out of a future with Max.”

“We are so heartbroken and mad. He should still be here with us,” said Simao, who along with his wife got a tattoo on their arms with their son’s written name and his handprint.

“We cannot bring Max back, but we could speak his name and tell his story and demand that every child with disabilities is no longer excluded, sidelined, or sent home. This should never have happened and it must never happen again.”

• READ MORE: ‘Hamilton is grieving’: 7-year-old child dead after being struck by city bus

Simao remembered his son as “such a sweet little boy who brought such joy and happiness to everybody.”

He said Max would community with either “his smile that would melt the world and turn make you smile back, or that classic Max smirk.”

Max loved three things, his dad said, his iPad, school, and Christmas, which he’d begun showing an interest in for the first-time ever.

“Now, myself and Emily will never have the chance to hear his sweet voice maybe one day say, ‘I love you mom and dad,’ or feel his hugs he gave to show his love.”

‘A province-wide pattern’

Kate Dudley-Logue, of the OAC, said Max’s exclusion from full-time school due to a lack of supports is not isolated and must not be normalized.

“The reality is that this has become a province-wide pattern every day across this province, students with disabilities are facing exclusions and modified schedules. This keeps them out of school,” she said.

For the past two years, the coalition has surveyed families of children with special needs from across Ontario, finding that a quarter of students with special education needs are not attending school for full days. The top reason given is that schools simply lacked the resources to safely support them.

The survey also found that about a third of students with disabilities have also experienced exclusions of some kind in the 2024-2025 school year, and that six per cent were not attending school at all.

This amounts to well over 115,000 students in Ontario schools who are experiencing exclusions, Dudley-Logue said.

Ford says province hiring more educators

Speaking following an unrelated news conference on Wednesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said this issue stems from when the Liberal government was in power more than eight years ago.

He said his government has increased funding for school resources by more than $200 million to $700 million.

“As I always say, it’s continuous improvement, but we’re funding more than any government in the history of our province, and we’re going to continue to fund it,” the Premier said.

He added that his government is hiring 6,000 more educators and is funding educational assistants “at an unprecedented amount.”

“We’re looking at making sure that we have enough teachers. We’re looking at Teachers College dropping (its program) from two years down to one year,” said Ford.

“We’re trying to push it for September to attract more people into the education system. You know, I want to thank our teachers, our educators. The EAs, it’s a very, very tough job, and we are hiring more educators.”

Simao, however, has some blunt words for the Premier in response to his remarks.

“My son’s dead so they’re not doing enough and they’ve had 8 years,” he said.

‘Not a unique story,’ says Stiles

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, however, suggested that the government needs to do more during Wednesday’s news conference.

“This is not a unique story. I wish it was. Thousands of students with special needs across this province face this reality every single day. Exclusions are not new, and they aren’t uncommon,” said Stiles.

“Parents like Chris and Emily, advocates like Kate have been sounding the alarm for years. We need to do something about the unfairness that students with special needs face due to the lack of proper investment in our schools.”

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Allison Hurst