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.
-
Coerced care, gendered neglect, and the reframing of family collapse
It began with daily incidents that were anything but small. My son repeatedly hugged my daughter against her will, pressing into her space while she pulled away, asking for it to stop. She reported that when she turned to supervision aides for help, they told her it was fine because they were siblings. Staff framed…
-
Advocacy in BC schools: a comprehensive guide for parents
When your child experiences harm in a British Columbia public school—when they are excluded, punished unjustly, denied accommodations, or subjected to practices that violate their dignity—you enter a landscape designed to exhaust rather than resolve, to defer rather than repair, to protect institutional reputation rather than protect children. This guide maps that terrain, naming the…
-
Side-by-side comparison of the VSB plan and a meaningful accessibility plan
The Vancouver School Board has released an accessibility plan that presents itself as a generous gesture toward inclusion, offering aspirational statements about equity, belonging, and shared responsibility, yet the document carries a softness that obscures the lived gravity of disabled students’ experiences and the profound emotional labour that families expend while navigating systems shaped by…
-
Serpentine Heights Elementary (SD36): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
Serpentine Heights presents its Code of Conduct as an affirmation of safety, inclusion, and communal care. The opening commitments describe a school that values belonging, co-constructed routines, and dignity for every learner, offering a vision of education rooted in relational safety and shared citizenship (p. 1) . This framing gestures toward a caring culture, one…
-
Urgent behaviour intervention teams in major BC school districts
Across British Columbia, many school districts have developed internal teams or programs designed to respond to urgent behavioural situations—such as elopement, aggression, or significant dysregulation—particularly when students are perceived as posing a safety risk or disrupting the learning environment. While these interventions are often framed as supportive or inclusive, families report that they can feel…
-
Fuck your independence dogma
How schools use ‘self-reliance’ to justify abandoning disabled kids. They told me my daughter needed to build her tolerance for the classroom without support. They waxed endlessly about how she wouldn’t want support in high school—ignoring that my daughter had been very clear that she does, in fact, want support. They said it with that…
-
No good news on government K-12 page
The BC k-12 portal promises inclusion, yet broken links and missing disability guidance reveal gaps in safety and access.
-
This isn’t a unique case, is it?
My children’s father said in a meeting: “Surely you’ve dealt with this before and you have a solution? This isn’t a unique case, is it?” The question hung in the air, simple and devastating, exposing in one breath the entire pretence on which school leadership rests. The question matters because it cuts through bureaucratic delay…
-
The children don’t see autism, they see meanness
How schools weaponise ableism through gendered care expectations. Harm amplified by systemic ableism The principal once told me, almost as an aside, that the children “don’t see autism, they see meanness.” It was meant as an explanation, but to me it landed as an indictment of a school culture—to let that ableist misunderstanding stand unchallenged.…
-
Human Rights Tribunal complaints are designed to exhaust
There is a silent calculus embedded in every human rights complaint: how much of your energy, your time, your composure, and your life force are you willing to lose in order to gain a largely symbolic victory. For those of us who have faced institutional harm the question is often whether we can survive the…
-
Nobody is going to thank you
Nobody tells you that you can pour every last scrap of yourself into advocacy and still feel your bond with your child begin to strain. There is a familiar story passed among parents—one in which you step in, do a little advocacy, and watch as the pieces fall into place. The children grow, the challenges…
-
They keep moving the goalposts while our kids pay the price
It began with a phone call that felt like a lifeline. A new teacher was coming, they said, and maybe this would be the one to understand. We clung to that hope. We paid for another assessment, scheduled more therapy, spent weekends in waiting rooms and weekdays in meetings where the promise of change hovered…
-
Capital planning as an equity issue
School construction and renewal determine more than where children learn—they decide who will be welcomed, supported, and given dignity in public education for decades to come. A district’s capital plan is a blueprint for access, and when that plan is delayed, misaligned, or wasteful, the effects cascade into every other area of the system, including…
-
The legal playbook every parent needs
When your child’s education is on the line, every conversation with a school team feels like walking a tightrope: you want collaboration, but you also carry the weight of knowing that human rights are not polite suggestions — they are legal obligations owed to your child. And here’s the truth: the minute you bring up the Human…
-
PTSD, big reactions, and school’s responsibility for care
The presence of PTSD—whether diagnosed formally or manifesting in trauma-linked behaviours—does nothing to diminish a student’s legal right to safety, dignity, and education. Schools are bound by law to provide accommodations and proactive support to every student, including those whose distress may surface as loud, sudden, or intense reactions. PTSD can be the direct result…
-
The infection of neoliberalism in Canadian public education
The ideology of neoliberalism, with its relentless emphasis on competition, individual responsibility, and market logic, has seeped deeply into Canadian public education. It presents itself as pragmatic and modernising, promising efficiency, innovation, and responsiveness to “stakeholders.” Yet beneath this rhetoric lies a corrosion of the foundational principles of public schooling — equity, universality, and the…
-
12 ways to tell when a crisis at school is really a failure of support, supervision, or repair
The hardest moments to navigate are often the ones that happen in seconds—but have been building for months. A single moment can change everything. A shove on the playground. A child running out the door. A sharp word or a sudden slap. To someone looking in from the outside, these moments can seem like they…
-
Why schools use collective punishment to stay in control
Some of our articles speak in a more academic voice, especially when we’re naming systems that silence or harm. This is a sister essay to Collective punishment: how schools displace guilt, erase harm, and preserve the collective, written as a more accessible entry point for readers who are newer to the topic or looking for…
-
Why outspoken mothers face retaliation for advocacy in BC schools
Some of our articles speak in a more academic voice, especially when we are naming systems that silence or harm within BC schools. This is a sister essay to Epistemic silencing of disabled children’s primary caregivers, written as a more accessible entry point for readers who are newer to the topic or looking for clarity…
-
Flourishing as an ethical imperative
Like many of you, I caught CBC’s Ideas episode the other day, where philosopher Angie Hobbs spoke about the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia—a term sometimes translated as happiness or welfare, but more richly understood as human flourishing. In a world flooded by crisis, it may seem indulgent or impractical to contemplate the good life,…