Would 10K and an NDA make the most excellent name for a country song?
I didn’t file a Freedom of Information request to stir conflict — I filed it because nothing made sense, and I needed a clue, any thread at all, to understand what had just happened to my family. I call FOIs the poor line. Where you go to line up when there’s nothing else you can do.
They granted themselves multiple extensions, so even though we were traumatised and on our last leg, we had to wait for bureaucracy.
When the package finally arrived, most of what I got back were emails I had written myself — the ones I’d stayed up drafting late at night, the truth. Hundreds of pages later, I sat there holding my own pain, reflected back at me through bureaucracy, and I felt something sharper than confusion — I felt fury.
I wasn’t asking for secrets. I wasn’t looking for anyone’s private file. I just wanted to understand how the district had made the decisions it made — how it justified withdrawing support, contradicting medical advice, denying access, refusing dignity. I had hoped, maybe naïvely, that there would be a record of that. There wasn’t. Or if there was, they didn’t release it.
And so I’ve started to wonder what’s happening in the files we never see — the ones behind closed doors, after the last email, when families stop showing up and the school says “the matter is resolved.” I’ve started wondering how many stories are tied up with settlement clauses, how many parents were offered a small payout in exchange for silence, how many harms were acknowledged quietly, not to be corrected, but to be contained.
What I want to ask next
I’m not asking for anyone’s private file or to drag names into the light — I just want what every parent deserves: a clear view of the terrain, a map of what escalation actually looks like, not in theory or public relations, but structurally, practically, step by step.
If the answer to “what happens next” changes depending on who’s asking, how much they push, how rich they are, how quietly they comply, then we’re not looking at a process — we’re looking at a power structure.
I want to know how many appeals were filed, how many were denied, how many were rerouted through legal, how many ended in small settlements bound by silence, and how many families were left staring at a closed door they were never told existed. This should be public record — because this is a public system, and we shouldn’t have to excavate it in fragments, whispering in DMs and group chats, just to learn how the machine works.
If I were to file again…
- How many student appeals has the Vancouver School Board received each year since 2019?
- How many of those appeals referenced disability, mental health, safety, or inclusion?
- How many involved legal consultation — either internal counsel or external firms like Harris & Co.?
- How many were resolved without any change in support or service?
- How many cases resulted in settlement agreements?
- Of those, how many included confidentiality clauses or NDAs?
- What is the average settlement amount offered to families after a formal appeal?
- How many families withdrew their appeals after receiving legal communication from the Board?
- How many emails include the terms “containment,” “communication strategy,” or “external escalation”?
- What is the total annual budget allocated to legal services in student support matters?
- What training, if any, is provided to principals and district staff on avoiding escalation to litigation?
These are questions I’m allowed to ask. These are questions every parent should be able to ask. And if the answers are buried — if even basic information about process and pattern is denied — then the silence itself becomes part of the evidence.
Because if the system were proud of how it treats families, they would already be telling us.
The legal department you never meet
Most people assume that when lawyers get involved, there’s a paper trail. A billable hour. A letterhead that makes it clear someone’s escalated. But in public systems like the Vancouver School Board, legal influence often works behind the scenes — quietly, pre-emptively, invisibly.
There’s no formal notice that your email is being reviewed for liability (been ghosted before?), or that your documentation is being interpreted through a legal lens. There’s no line item in the budget that says: Time spent crafting language to avoid admitting fault re Just a Parent.
“At this time, I am not recommending any changes to the school’s current plan.”
Instead, legal advice is embedded in the process. It’s folded into administrative routines, absorbed by job titles like “District Principal” or “Manager of Student Support.” It arrives before you ever know it’s present.
Staff speak with the authority of law without being lawyers. They override medical advice without being doctors. They interpret diagnoses, rewrite support plans, assess risk, assign blame, and dismiss harm — all without professional accountability to the disciplines they’re borrowing from. And when parents push back, they say: We’ve reviewed the file. We believe the school is acting appropriately.
“We believe the school is already meeting [Just a Child] where she is at.”
So when a parent is handed a bland reply that contradicts the evidence, or a form letter that sidesteps every specific, or a response that feels eerily polished — that may not be an accident. It may be a product. It may be legal advice, scrubbed of signature, passed off as protocol.
And that means even the stories that don’t end in $10K and an NDA may still be shaped by legal containment. Because legal strategy doesn’t just show up at the end. It starts much earlier. Often with an email that seems just polite enough to shut you down.
