A new website aims to help beleaguered parents of special education pupils, who are suspended at about twice the rate of other students.

Aimed at parents and support groups, the site has tips on dealing with school boards, school job duties, the law and sections on bullying, school discipline and special education.

Called schooladvocacy.ca, it grew out of education work by the Hamilton Pro Bono Project, a lawyers' group that has advocated for students' and parents' rights.

"We found the people we targeted, who were largely low-income, needed information and didn't need a lawyer," said project co-ordinator Mark Williams.

At a recent launch for the site, one mother who wouldn't give her name said her sons aged seven and 11 have been suspended 20 times this year.

She claims the reasons were minor.

Her sons are just dealing with a marital separation and moving to Hamilton, she said.

"They hate school," she added and said school meetings can be intimidating because parents are outnumbered.

The Hamilton public school board's 2004-05 Safe School report found special education students were suspended at more than twice the rate of all elementary students.

That year, there were 800 suspensions, a rate of 35 per cent, in the board's population of 2,300 "exceptional" elementary students -- those with physical, mental or learning disabilities.

The rate in the total elementary population of 38,000 was just 12.7 per cent.

Some parents worry the high rate for "exceptional" students is because they are hard to teach and lack the support they need.

The site, funded with $12,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, saw three legal clinics partner with Settlement and Integration Services Organization (SISO) and the parent-to-parent group, the Hamilton Family Network.

Family network director Jan Burke-Gaffney said repeated use of one-day suspensions can threaten an "exceptional" pupil's education and has cost parents jobs due to missed work.

"Some kids view being sent home as a reward ... so it's not even teaching a lesson," said Burke-Gaffney, whose network serves 900 families from St. Catharines to Oakville.

She said the website will help parents learn to lobby for in-class educational assistants for their children, challenge the placement of their child or ensure recommendations from an assessment are carried out.