Legal and ethical
Includes the laws, policies, complaint routes, records, oversight bodies, and accountability tools families use to challenge exclusion, discrimination, delay, denial of accommodation, and procedural harm in schools.
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The business process trap
I’m a business analyst by trade, so I naturally wanted to understand how things work in schools, but resist the temptation to let schools draw you in!!! School districts speak a language designed to obscure accountability, using administrative complexity as armour against obligation, converting urgent need into bureaucratic procedure, and replacing immediate legal duty with…
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Newfoundland and Labrador announces $11,000 investment in inclusive education
The provincial government issued a press release celebrating its distribution of $11,000 across eleven schools—$1,000 per institution—framed as demonstrable commitment to safe, caring, and inclusive learning environments. Yes, you read that right: a press release for 11k. The arithmetic speaks plainly: this measly sum, distributed across an entire province’s school system, positioned as evidence of…
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Ministry regulations on physical restraint and seclusion in BC schools
Physical restraint and seclusion are permitted in British Columbia schools under the Ministry of Education and Childcare guidelines—despite being widely described as last-resort safety measures. When schools restrain or isolate disabled children, districts often cite the Provincial Guidelines on Physical Restraint and Seclusion in School Settings (2015) to claim compliance. Parents are told the intervention…
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On subjectivity, vicarious belonging, and institutional violence
Winter light, girls singing, a boy listening from the front seat. A mother tries to witness without interpreting what nine months of isolation cost.
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How BC education policy discourse positions institutional refusal as neutral fact
This is a methodological critique examining how dominant policy analysis systematically erases the institutional practices that produce educational exclusion while appearing rigorous, neutral, and evidence-based. Understanding this analytical apparatus matters because it shapes what counts as legitimate evidence in meetings, what research administrators cite to justify program decisions, and what policy recommendations achieve political traction.…
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Tara Carman tracks absences district by district
CBC’s Tara Carman released another investigation this week, this one examining absence patterns across British Columbia’s largest school districts, finding that excused absences have tripled in Vancouver secondary schools between October 2018 and October 2025, that chronic absence rates have quadrupled in Burnaby, that the numbers climb steadily across Central Okanagan and Surrey despite marginal…
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Teacher employment negotiations reach impasse
BC teachers reached an impasse with their employer this week after the province refused to fund improvements to classroom conditions, offering wage increases while withholding the supports that would allow teachers to meet student needs. The union points to counsellor ratios averaging one per 693 students against a North American standard of one per 250,…
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Where Surrey’s $6.3 million went
I recently reviewed the provincial budget tables and buried within Table 17 (2024/25 Amended Annual Budgeted Operating Expenditures of Program 1.10 Inclusive Education by Object) and Table 26 (2024/25 Actual Operating Expenses of Program 1.10 Inclusive Education by Object) of British Columbia’s 2024/25 operating budget documents lies evidence of what can only be described as…
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Champlain Heights Annex School (VSB SD39): a neurodiversity-informed conduct critique
Champlain Heights Annex School’s Code of Conduct promises a safe, inclusive, equitable, welcoming, nurturing, and healthy school environment. The document aligns explicitly with Vancouver School Board’s District Student Code of Conduct (AP 350), affirms the BC Human Rights Code, and structures behavioural expectations through a three-level consequence framework extending from classroom redirection to formal suspension.…
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Section 22 of BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act
Public bodies in BC may only withhold information under FIPPA if a specific exception applies: Each redaction must cite the exact statutory section and explain how disclosure would cause the harm the exemption is meant to prevent, as detailed in Section 8 of FIPPA. This article was prepared for my own edification for advocacy actions I…
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Discipline outcomes and statistics in BC school districts: what the statistics reveal about institutional protection
Schools are quick to label children as dysregulated when they struggle to process harm, respond slowly under stress, or push back against systems that have failed them. These labels carry consequences. What is less often examined is how institutions respond when they behave in the same way. A note I support parents making complaints when…
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What districts refuse to count, they refuse to see
Canary Collective makes explicit what current FESL reporting renders invisible: the exclusionary practices that shape access to learning but disappear from accountability structures because districts are not required to document them publicly.
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When your child has problems at school in BC: a guide for newcomer parents
On the surface, BC schools seem to welcome diversity, but the day-to-day experience of parents negotiating with schools for access tells another story. This plain language guide is meant to demystify access.
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PBIS and oh, the places you’ll go
Remember that Dr. Seuss book promising unlimited potential? Oh, the places you’ll go! Well, PBIS has places to take your kid too. And you’re not going to like where this journey ends. It started with good intentions (it always does) Schools adopted Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports to reduce suspensions. To build better communities. To…
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Education assistants and the infrastructure of exclusion
Between 2014 and 2023, education assistants in British Columbia filed more than four times as many violence-related injury reports with WorkSafeBC than teachers, a disproportion that exposes the material reality of who absorbs classroom harm where support has been systematically withdrawn. According to WorkSafeBC data referenced in Want to Improve Schools? Education Assistants Have Ideas, teaching assistants…
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BCTF lobbies for changes to new literacy screening mandate
The BC Ministry of Education and Child Care announced a new mandate this week requiring literacy screening for all kindergarten students beginning in the 2025–26 school year, expanding to K–3 students the following year. The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation published their response, which deserves careful attention. No budget for implementing literacy screening Everyone can see…
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Four years on a waitlist
Richard Hackett’s eight-year-old son Austin has waited four years for occupational therapy services in Ontario, placed on the waitlist when he was four years old and still waiting as he navigates school with a learning disability and ADHD. The family received a school-based assessment with no follow-up, no results shared, no clarity about whether support…
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25 things you can ask for on your child’s IEP
Individualised Education Plans (IEPs) in BC carry significant weight even though they are not legally binding contracts. Schools have policy obligations to follow them, they serve as evidence in Human Rights Tribunal complaints, and they document what your child needs to access their education. The language matters. The framing matters. What gets written shapes what…
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Midwifery and inclusive education: how holistic models become public infrastructure
Midwifery offers something rare in policy discourse: a concrete, recent example of how a holistic, person-centred model of care moved from the margins into stable public funding without diluting its philosophy or abandoning its core practices. The model succeeded because practitioners organised collectively, defined clear boundaries around safe practice, and presented government with a credible,…
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Partial-day schooling as systemic violation: new research confirms what parents already know
The Journal of Inclusion and Disability published research this month documenting what families living through exclusion have been saying for years: partial-day schooling operates as institutional marginalisation, transforming policy failure into individual deficit while schools claim to serve students they are systematically denying education. Gordon Porter and Andrea Cameron’s article examines partial-day schooling across Canadian…
