5. Appeal the IPRC decision

You can appeal the IPRC decision to the Special Education Appeal Board (SEAB). Each school board has its own SEAB.

Deadline for SEAB appeal

After the IPRC decision, you can either ask for a follow-up IPRC meeting, or you can appeal directly to the SEAB. If you don’t like the outcome of the follow-up meeting, you can still appeal to the SEAB after the follow-up meeting.

If you don’t ask for a follow-up meeting, you must submit a Notice of Appeal within 30 days of receiving the IPRC’s original decision.

If you appeal to the SEAB after a follow-up meeting with the IPRC, then you must submit a Notice of Appeal within 15 days of the IPRC’s follow-up decision.

SEAB process

The SEAB is a new panel of 3 members. You and the school board will each select 1 member. These 2 members select the third member.  None of these people can be people who worked with your child previously.

Usually, you can ask that your member be a person from a local organization that helps students with exceptionalities like your child’s. See the Answer before Step 1 for a list of organizations. If you don’t know of any organizations, the school board can give you a list.

The SEAB will only consider appeals about:

• whether the student has an exceptionality
• the type of placement recommended

The SEAB will not consider appeals about the program and service recommendations of the IPRC.

The SEAB process is like a mini trial. The members will listen to evidence from you and from the school board to make their decision.   Sometimes, the members will work with you and the school board to reach an agreement.

All of the information you give to the IPRC will also help the SEAB. If you have collected new information since the IPRC, you should give it to the SEAB too.

Powers of the SEAB

The SEAB cannot change the IPRC’s decision. They can only make recommendations to the school board.

Sometimes the recommendations will be the same as the IPRC’s decision. But sometimes the SEAB will recommend that the school board do something different. The school board can either accept or reject the SEAB’s recommendations.

Further appeal

If you do not agree with the SEAB’s recommendations, or if the school board does not accept the recommendations, you can appeal to the Ontario Special Education Tribunal (OSET). This rarely happens, but you should seriously consider it if you reach this stage.