In 2018, experts told BC exactly how to fix special education funding. The government has spent five years “consulting” instead. Meanwhile, your child sits in hallways.
The 192% problem nobody wants to fund
Between 2015 and 2024, autism designations in BC schools exploded by 192%. Total student enrolment? Up just 11.6%.
The province knows this. They have the data. They’ve had it for years.
And they’ve done nothing.
What happened in 2018
An independent panel reviewed BC’s education funding and recommended switching to a “prevalence model”—funding based on how many disabled kids we know exist, not how many families can fight their way through diagnostic hell to prove it.
The idea was simple: autism happens at predictable rates. ADHD happens at predictable rates. Learning disabilities happen at predictable rates. Fund schools for the kids who are actually there.
The BC Teachers’ Federation immediately opposed it. Not because they don’t support disabled kids, but because they knew what would happen: the province would use “prevalence funding” as an excuse to cut total dollars while pretending to reform the system.
They were probably right.
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Gatekeeping
Gatekeeping—the use of policy, process or politeness to deny access—operates insidiously within British Columbia’s education system, erecting bureaucratic hurdles that require families to utter precise jargon, navigate outdated manuals and endure endless procedural steps before supports materialize; despite the province’s commitment to inclusive…
But here’s what the BCTF was protecting
The current designation system is a nightmare:
- Families wait years for Sunny Hill assessments (or pay $4,000+ for private ones)
- Schools require formal diagnosis before acknowledging your kid needs help
- You finally get the designation after months of fighting
- The money doesn’t follow your child—it goes into a general pool
- Districts spend it on whoever’s melting down the loudest right now
Your quiet autistic kid who’s falling apart inside? Doesn’t qualify as urgent. Your bright ADHD daughter who’s drowning but still getting Bs? She’s “fine.”
The designation you fought for guarantees exactly nothing.
What the prevalence model actually threatened to expose
If BC funded schools based on actual disability rates instead of forcing families to prove each individual child deserves support:
- The fiction that some classrooms are “normal” would collapse
- Districts couldn’t hide behind “we only have X designated students”
- The province would have to admit they’ve been systematically underfunding disabled kids for decades
Five years of “stakeholder consultation”
Since 2018, the Ministry has been:
- Forming working groups
- Commissioning reports
- Holding meetings
- Asking for input
- Reviewing feedback
- Considering options
- Examining models
You know what they haven’t been doing? Funding your kid’s education.
Every year they spend consulting is another year of:
- Room clears that traumatise autistic children
- Partial school days that aren’t actually education
- Kids falling years behind grade level
- Parents burning through savings on private tutors and therapists
- Mothers quitting jobs to homeschool because the system abandoned their children
But wait—there’s $800 million for this other thing
Remember the Classroom Enhancement Fund? The one that restores class size and composition language after the government illegally stripped it in 2002?
That fund gets $800 million. Every single year. Automatically.
No consultation. No stakeholder working groups. No “we need to carefully examine all options.”
Just money. Flowing. To schools.
Because when the government actually wants to fund something, they find the money.
What gets reviewed versus what gets funded
In 2024, the province paused admissions to the University Transition Program—an academic acceleration program for gifted students—to review whether it was stressing kids out.
Parental complaints about mental health in an enrichment program? Immediate ministerial attention. Consultants hired. Program paused.
Disabled kids locked in isolation rooms? Subjected to physical restraint? Attending school 2 hours a day for years? Pushed into online programs because buildings “aren’t safe” for them?
Still waiting for that same level of concern.
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Protecting the ledger over the learner: operationalising scarcity in BC School Districts
British Columbia’s public schools are mandated to provide inclusive education for all students, but they do so in a context of chronic resource scarcity. Scarcity in education means there are not enough funds, staff, skills, or services to fully meet all student needs. School districts…
Meanwhile, Sunny Hill has a multi-year waitlist
The public healthcare system that’s supposed to assess your child:
- Makes families wait years for assessment
- Won’t automatically screen siblings of autistic kids (even though autism is hereditary)
- Treats diagnosis as scarce resource instead of urgent intervention
If you can afford $4,000, you can bypass the line. If you can’t, your child attends school without support while you wait. And wait. And wait.
This is the first gate. Even before you get to schools, healthcare rations who gets diagnosed.
Because if Sunny Hill actually assessed everyone who needed it, designation numbers would explode even faster than the 192% increase we’re already seeing.
Many parents report that if testing is done with the school, such as the school psychologist doing a psychoeducational assessment, that this is treated more seriously than external reports. Which exhibits another way of gatekeeping.
The twice-exceptional kids who fall through every crack
Your gifted autistic kid? Too smart for autism support. Too autistic for enrichment programs.
Your bright ADHD daughter who’s getting Bs while having panic attacks in the bathroom? School says she’s “doing fine.”
These kids exist at the intersection of failures: underfunded special education and underfunded gifted programming, both victims of the same scarcity logic that tells teachers to do the impossible with nothing.
What this actually costs families
Not just money (though you’re spending thousands you don’t have).
You’re also performing:
- Medical advocacy (navigating Sunny Hill waitlists)
- Educational advocacy (fighting for IEP accommodations the district ignores)
- Diagnostic labour (translating your child’s suffering into clinical language)
- Documentation (emails, meeting notes, incident reports)
- Crisis management (every school morning, every evening meltdown)
- Emotional regulation (for your child, for yourself, for everyone around you)
All while working. Parenting other kids. Trying to sleep. Trying not to break.
And the province knows this.
They know you’re burning out. They’re counting on it. Because exhausted parents eventually stop fighting, and then the district doesn’t have to accommodate your kid anymore.
What the province actually has
They have:
- Comprehensive data on disability prevalence
- Decades of research on inclusive education
- Legal requirements under the Charter and Human Rights Code
- A $800M/year funding mechanism that works perfectly well for class size
- Knowledge of exactly which practices harm disabled students
What they don’t have: political will to spend money on your child.
What happens next?
More consultation. More working groups. More reports.
More years of your child falling behind.
More cohorts of disabled students moving through a system designed to abandon them.
More families depleting their savings and their health fighting for rights their children already have on paper.
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Government funding for education fails to keep pace with known needs
The Education and Childcare Estimate Notes 2025 reveal a province experiencing an enormous rise in disability designations while preparing the minister with polished assurances that gesture toward progress, equity, and commitment, and this dual presentation of crisis beneath a veneer of stability creates…
Unless
Unless parents get angry enough to make this a voting issue.
Unless you forward this to your MLA and ask why $800M appears automatically for one thing but disabled students have been waiting five years.
Unless you show up at school board meetings and ask exactly where designation funding for your child actually goes.
Unless you stop accepting “we’re working on it” as an answer.
This is what they’re gambling on
That you’re too tired to fight.
That the system is complicated enough that you won’t see the pattern.
That you’ll blame your child’s teacher instead of the province’s funding formula.
That you’ll eventually give up.
Don’t.
What you can do right now
- Email your MLA. Ask specifically why disabled students need consultation but the Classroom Enhancement Fund doesn’t.
- Request designation funding transparency from your district. Where does the money attached to your child’s diagnosis actually go?
- Document everything. Every room clear. Every partial day. Every accommodation promised and not delivered.
- Connect with other parents. You’re not alone. The system wants you to feel like you are.
- Vote like your child’s education depends on it. Because it does.
The province has everything they need to fund inclusive education equitably. They’re choosing not to.
Every year they wait, more children suffer. Every consultation they commission, more families break.
They’re gambling that you’re too exhausted to demand they actually do their jobs.
Prove them wrong.
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When delay becomes policy: British Columbia’s strategic abandonment of disabled students
In 2018, an independent panel reviewed how British Columbia funds kindergarten through grade twelve education and recommended a prevalence model for special education funding, a shift that would allocate resources based on statistical prevalence of disability within the general student population rather than on individual…
