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 have had to develop strategies to manage and ration what they do have. This report examines how scarcity is operationalised – that is, how it’s built into everyday decisions and policies – in BC school districts. We identify key mechanisms by which districts manage, institutionalise, and rationalise scarcity, including:

• Funding allocation practices that stretch limited dollars and leave shortfalls.
• Staffing decisions (hiring, layoffs, and assignments) that control costs but limit support.
• Service thresholds and triaging of student needs to match services to budget.
• Procedural deferrals (built-in delays and bureaucratic steps) that postpone or reduce resource use.
• Bureaucratic language and euphemisms that reframe lack of resources as intentional policy.

Throughout, we provide examples from multiple districts – including large urban districts like Vancouver (SD39) and Surrey (SD36), as well as a smaller district such as Cariboo-Chilcotin (SD27) – to show how these practices appear across BC. The aim is a plain-language analysis for parents and advocates, to understand how and why certain decisions are made and how “doing more with less” affects students.

Chronic underfunding and tough trade-offs

One root cause of scarcity is the gap between what inclusive education actually costs and what funding is provided. For years, the BC Ministry of Education’s supplemental grants for students with special needs have covered only a portion of districts’ spending in this area. In fact, in 2016–17 the province only funded about 58% of what districts spent on special education, leaving a shortfall of over $300 million that districts had to cover from their general budgets bctf.ca. This funding gap has been persistent; on average from 2007 to 2017, barely ~53% of special education costs were covered by targeted funding bctf.ca. The rest comes out of a district’s base budget, meaning money must be pulled from other programs or cost-savings found elsewhere.

Compounding the problem is which students get funded. The Ministry provides extra “Inclusive Education” grants for certain designated categories (low-incidence, more severe disabilities), labeled as Level 1, 2, or 3 supports. However, “high-incidence” needs – such as mild learning disabilities, moderate behaviour or mental health challenges, or gifted students – receive no additional funding from the province bctf.ca. Those students still require support, but any help they get must be financed out of the regular per-pupil funding. This policy (in place since 2002) incentivises districts to be very judicious about how they allocate support: essentially, they receive $0 extra for many struggling students, yet are expected to include them. It also pressures how students are classified (designated); there’s been a shift over time toward more students in funded categories and fewer in unfunded ones bctf.ca, partly because districts feel the need to secure whatever funding they can for a child’s needs bctf.ca. In short, the funding formula itself creates a scarcity mindset: only some needs “count” for funding, and the money for even those is often far below actual cost.

District budgets reflect these shortfalls. For example, the Vancouver School Board (VSB) in 2023–24 received about $70.9 million in supplemental Inclusive Education funding (for Level 1–3 designations), but actually spent $96.4 million on inclusive education servicesmedia.vsb.bc.ca media.vsb.bc.ca. Vancouver had to divert roughly $25 million from general funds to cover the difference. Every dollar redirected this way is a dollar withheld from something else that once made school feel whole — the quiet devastation of pulling funding from music so a child can receive bathrooming support, or closing beloved enrichment programs so that other basic needs for disabled students can be managed. It constructs a moral framework where we are forced to triage necessities, as though inclusion itself must be paid for with the loss of joy, creativity, or belonging for others.

Larger districts can sometimes absorb these hits by running deficits or using surpluses for a time, but eventually they face tough choices. As the BC Teachers’ Federation noted, districts are forced to decide “should special education suffer or should cuts be made elsewhere to compensate?” bctf.ca. Often, a bit of both happens: services get stretched thin (so special ed does suffer in quality), and yet other areas (like arts programs or staffing levels) might also get trimmed to free up funds for high-need students.

In Surrey, BC’s largest district, rapid enrolment growth and insufficient funding have led to significant budget shortfalls. In the 2025–26 school year, Surrey faced a $16 million deficit despite a $1.16 billion budget surreyschools.ca. The Board chair described making “tough but necessary decisions… in the interest of long-term sustainability” surreyschools.ca. In plain terms, this meant cuts.

Surrey’s Board openly warned that without more provincial support, they had no choice but to reduce services. They unanimously passed a budget that cut or reduced several programs. For example, they decided on “reviewing and reallocating non-enrolling teacher positions to better align staffing with classroom needs” and reducing Inclusive Education support worker positions “through employee attrition.”surreyschools.ca. This is careful wording to say that specialist teachers (who don’t have their own class, e.g. counsellors, resource teachers) are being moved or cut, and that education assistants/support staff for students with special needs will be fewer (not fired en masse, but positions eliminated as people retire or resign). The Board emphasised these were painful choices taken only after pleading with the province for more help surreyschools.ca. One trustee noted “we have a $16 million shortfall… when your budget is 93% wages, it doesn’t leave a lot of money to cover that shortfall” surreyschools.ca – meaning cuts inevitably hit staffing (since nearly all costs are people). Surrey’s situation highlights a common reality: enrolment growth or higher needs aren’t matched by funding increases, so districts either run deficits (not allowed for long) or cut costs by scaling back services.

Smaller districts like SD27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin) face scarcity too, often in an even starker form. Many rural districts have high proportions of students with special needs but smaller budgets, and they tend to receive an even lower percentage of needed funds from the province. In 2016–17, 16 districts (mostly rural/remote) received less than half of what they ended up spending on special ed, and four districts got under 40% of their costs covered bctf.ca. Cariboo-Chilcotin is an example of a district that must serve a widely spread student population with limited funding. This can mean they simply cannot afford certain specialized programs at all. The entire notion of “inclusive education” becomes an unfunded mandate, so scarcity is the default. These districts lean heavily on base funding and creativity to support diverse learners, but there’s no slack – money is tight everywhere. It’s not uncommon for small districts to use one staff member in multiple roles or tap into community services because they can’t hire a full team in each area. In SD27’s case, for instance, district documents show efforts to partner with the local health authority (Interior Health) to coordinate services like childcare or student supports, even discussing “priority waitlist spaces” jointly sd27.bc.ca. That suggests they are trying to maximise resources by working across agencies – essentially saying, “we only have so many slots, let’s make sure the highest priority cases get them” – a direct response to scarcity.

That’s where much of the silent harm begins — because when supports are scarce, and professionals are too few, it falls to frontline staff, often without clinical training, to decide who counts as a priority. And in a system wired for crisis response, it is usually the most visibly disruptive student who rises to the top. This entrenches a pattern: the child who explodes gets support; the child who implodes gets overlooked. Over time, this normalises a form of triage that rewards externalising distress and systematically marginalises quieter suffering — often girls, often racialised, often children who have been taught not to take up space.

In summary, underfunding at the provincial level cascades down to every district, big or small. Districts manage this by allocating funding extremely carefully and often overspending their special education grants (then backfilling from elsewhere). Over time, this erodes other services and/or forces cuts, angering families and resulting in blowback. Scarcity isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing condition built into how districts plan their budgets. As we’ll see next, this translates into concrete decisions about staffing and services on the ground.

Managing human resources under constraint

Because salaries and benefits make up the vast majority of education spending, managing scarcity often boils down to managing staff. Districts have developed several strategies to control staffing costs in ways that also limit services:

• Not filling vacancies or absences (hiring freezes and delayed replacements).
• Reducing positions through attrition or layoffs.
• Stretching staff across roles or schools (“flexible” assignments).
• Prioritising certain roles while cutting others (usually keeping classroom teachers but cutting specialist/support roles).

One subtle but impactful practice is how districts handle staff absences. In Vancouver, for example, the long-standing practice for resource teachers (special education teachers who support students with identified needs) is not to call in a substitute teacher until the third day of a teacher’s absence media.vsb.bc.ca. In other words, if a resource teacher is sick or away for one or two days, the students on their caseload simply do without that support. This saves the district money on substitute (TTOC) wages. The rationale given is that a short-term substitute cannot effectively pick up the specialised work of a resource teacher for just a day or two media.vsb.bc.ca. There is truth to that – these teachers often work on individualised programs that a random substitute wouldn’t know – but from a service perspective, it means students lose support for those days. The decision is framed as minimal harm (and perhaps pedagogically sensible in some cases), but it’s also clearly a cost-saving measure. Multiply this by many absences over a year, and it represents a significant amount of unprovided support time. It’s an institutionalised way to “absorb” scarcity by simply not backfilling short gaps. Parents might notice that when the learning support teacher is away, there was no replacement – this is by design.

If scarcity weren’t driving this decision, resource teachers would be given time and structures to orient colleagues to their students’ needs, ensuring that any absence triggered a seamless handoff. In their absence, another in-school staff member could step in with clarity and care — and that person’s usual role would be backfilled by a trained substitute, maintaining continuity across the board. If scarcity weren’t driving this decision, resource teachers would be given time and structures to orient colleagues to their students’ needs, ensuring that any absence triggered a seamless handoff. In their absence, another in-school staff member could step in with clarity and care — and that person’s usual role would be backfilled by a trained substitute, maintaining continuity across the board. But when the system assumes that the work of inclusion can pause for 48 hours without harm, it reveals where its priorities lie: in protecting the ledger over the learner. This is not pedagogical prudence. It is scarcity dressed as reason.

..When the system assumes that the work of inclusion can pause for 48 hours without harm, it reveals where its priorities lie:
in protecting the ledger over the learner.

Just a Parent

All districts confronted with deficits look at reducing staffing, since that’s where the money is. However, they often choose how to reduce carefully. Surrey’s 2025–26 budget is a prime example: rather than pink-slipping a slew of workers outright, the district opted to shrink positions through attrition surreyschools.ca. This means as people retire or quit, those jobs are not refilled, slowly lowering the headcount.

In Surrey, the positions specifically targeted were Inclusive Education Support Workers (IESWs) – essentially education assistants who work with students with special needs. By not hiring new support workers to replace those leaving, Surrey acknowledges that over time fewer adults will be available to support those students. They couched this as “a reduction… through employee attrition” surreyschools.ca, which sounds gentler than cuts. But the effect is clear: classrooms will have to manage with less adult support.

In fact, advocacy groups noted with alarm that Surrey had to cut roughly 50 EA positions in an earlier round of cost-cutting instituteforpubliceducation.org – a move described as “heartbreaking” in media, given how it directly affects children who rely on those aides. These staffing reductions were done to balance budgets, at the direct expense of inclusion support. Surrey also chose to close or consolidate some programs (like certain learning centres and even an elementary band program) as part of belt-tightening instituteforpubliceducation.org. Each of those decisions saves salaries and operating costs, but it means families see services taken away or moved. The district tries to reassign staff elsewhere if possible (for example, when Surrey scaled back a StrongStart early childhood program, they noted staff could transition to other roles surreyschools.ca), but the net effect is fewer total staff serving kids.

For smaller districts, staffing challenges often manifest as inability to recruit or retain specialised professionals. Roles like school psychologists, speech-language pathologists (SLPs), occupational therapists, etc., are hard to staff in rural areas (and even in cities) because of province-wide shortages and competition from other sectors. But scarcity of funding worsens this – districts might only budget for a part-time position or none at all. Vancouver, despite being large, reports “difficulty in staffing specialised positions such as SLPs, school psychologists, resource teachers and education assistants” due to demand and vacancy issues media.vsb.bc.ca. When positions go unfilled, that again means students wait or get less service. Some rural districts might share specialists: e.g. one psychologist might serve multiple districts, or an itinerant SLP travels between a dozen schools. This “circuit rider” approach is a form of rotating support driven by scarcity of staff (and money to hire them).

Districts also manage staff by being “flexible” in assignments. The idea of “flexible staffing” is often presented as a positive: staff can be moved or scheduled in response to student needs, rather than fixed one-size-fits-all formulas. For instance, Gulf Islands School District (SD64) explicitly states it “recognises and responds to the need for flexible staffing based on evidence of student learning needs.” media.sd64.bc.ca. In practice, this can mean if one school’s needs increase, the district might reassign some of a support teacher’s time to that school from another. Or a teacher might have a dual role (half time in classroom, half time helping with special ed) to cover multiple needs. While efficiency is good, “flexibility” can also be a euphemism when used in excess. It often masks that there aren’t enough staff to give each school what it ideally requires, so people have to cover multiple bases. Parents might experience this as, say, their school’s counsellor only on site two days a week because she’s shared with another school. The district will say this is a flexible use of a limited resource. That is true – and it’s a direct result of scarcity (there’s only one counsellor when ideally there’d be two).

Another example: to avoid hiring more staff, a district might “reallocate non-enrolling teachers” to classrooms. Surrey mentioned aligning staffing with classroom needs surreyschools.ca; one interpretation is that if they had, say, more resource teachers than absolutely required by law, they might convert some of those positions into regular classroom teachers to handle growing enrolment. This ensures every division (class) has a teacher (which is mandated) at the expense of fewer support teachers (which are more discretionary). Prioritising core teaching positions over support roles is a common response to funding pressures – because you can’t have uncovered classrooms, but you can have fewer learning assistance periods or less reading recovery, for example.

the unspoken calculus that disabled families are forced to witness again and again: support roles are the first to be repurposed, reduced, or sacrificed because the system will always preserve the visible structure of schooling over its ethical obligations. Classrooms cannot go without teachers, but disabled children can go without support. Entire classes are never sent home due to lack of funding — but a single disabled child often is, quietly and without formal suspension. The redistribution of non-enrolling staff is framed as flexibility, but it reveals a deeper truth: inclusion is never the priority when scarcity demands trade-offs. The system preserves the optics of wholeness by subtracting the children least able to object.

In summary, staffing decisions under scarcity tend to reduce direct support for students in subtle ways: not replacing someone here, cutting hours there, stretching one role into two. Districts frame these moves as efficiency or smart management, but families may notice the practical difference: perhaps this year there’s no dedicated reading specialist at the school, or the EA now splits time between two children. Each decision is a piece of the puzzle of how scarcity is spread thin across the system.

Service thresholds and need triage: rationing support

When resources are scarce, districts set thresholds – formal or informal – to decide who gets access to limited support. In essence, needs are triaged: high-priority cases get served first (or get more support), and others wait or receive a lower level of service. This can happen via designation categories, referral criteria, waitlist protocols, or rotating service schedules.

Designation and funding thresholds: As noted earlier, only certain diagnosed needs bring extra funding. This creates a threshold effect: students who don’t meet the criteria for a Ministry designation often get significantly less support at school. For example, a child with very severe behavioural challenges might be designated “Intensive Behaviour Intervention” (Level 3 funding ~$12,000) and thus attract some additional staffing to assist. Another child with “moderate” behaviour issues (just below that threshold) might get no extra funding, so any help they receive is at the school’s discretion. The second child might only get occasional check-ins or be on a teacher’s watchlist, whereas the first child could be assigned an aide or support block because they officially qualify. This reclassification of needs happens often: schools might describe a struggling student in ways that fit (or don’t fit) a funded category. If they can’t get the designation, practically it means the student’s needs will be addressed with whatever the regular classroom can provide – which might be insufficient. In the words of one BCTF research report, “simply because a need is more prevalent (high-incidence) does not mean it requires less support… yet those students are not funded”, and districts have to somehow meet those needs without dedicated resources bctf.ca. Some parents feel they must push to get a diagnosis (like autism or a specific learning disorder) to “unlock” support; without a label, there’s a risk a child’s struggles are seen as not severe enough in a system that can’t support everyone intensively.

“Tiered support” models and triage: BC has broadly adopted a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework (also known as Response to Intervention, RTI). In theory, this is good pedagogy: Tier 1 is strong core instruction for all, Tier 2 is supplemental help for some (small groups, short-term interventions), and Tier 3 is intensive, individualised support for a few. While this framework is evidence-based, it can also function as a rationing system. By design, only a small percentage of students should need Tier 3 at any given time. If more do, the model might prompt educators to reevaluate whether those students really need the intensive help or if there’s a way to serve them in Tier 2.

In a resource-plentiful world, one could give many students one-on-one assistance, but with scarcity, Tier 3 slots are treated as precious. In practice, districts use tiered support to justify why not every struggling student gets one-on-one help. They emphasise that many can be served with differentiated instruction in the classroom or short group interventions. Tiered support becomes a bit of a euphemism when a parent asks, “Why can’t my child work daily with the reading specialist?” and the answer is, “We operate on a tiered support model – your child is receiving Tier 2 support (which might be a weekly small group), and only students with the most complex needs get Tier 3 pull-out help.” It frames the situation as intentional design rather than lack. It’s true that not every child needs the highest level of help, but parents intuitively sense when a child could benefit from more yet is being held at a certain level due to limited staff.

Waitlists and “monitored” lists: One of the clearest examples of triage is the use of waitlists for services. Many specialised supports have waitlists because demand exceeds supply. For instance, psycho-educational assessments (formal testing for learning disabilities, cognitive assessments, etc.) are often backlogged.

Vancouver has taken an interesting approach: the district claims its school psychologists “do not keep waitlists” for assessments; instead, they maintain “monitor lists” media.vsb.bc.ca. What this means is that a student who has been flagged for a possible assessment isn’t simply put in a queue indefinitely. First, the school-based team will implement interventions and track the student’s progress (the child is monitored). Only when they’ve tried all appropriate strategies and still suspect a learning disorder will the school psych formally sign off to do an evaluation media.vsb.bc.ca. At that point, they commit to completing it within that school year. This system avoids the optics of a long waitlist – no one is officially “waiting for two years for testing” because if it’s deemed urgent enough to do, it will be done by year-end. 

However, the reality is that many students sit on the “monitor list” for long periods, which is effectively a controlled waitlist. I’ve met a parent who said her child waited 3 years. I’ve never actually met another parent that didn’t wind up going private because of frustration with the long wait. It’s a way to defer some assessments until absolutely necessary and not have to pay for a large chunk, when parents pay privately.

Vancouver further manages overflow by running extra assessment clinics during spring break or summer (staffed by VSB psychologists or retirees) to catch up on cases that the regular staff couldn’t complete during the year media.vsb.bc.ca. This is a creative solution to avoid multi-year waits – they squeeze in more testing out of regular session – but it also underscores that demand outstrips capacity.

Not all districts can do this; some simply accumulate a backlog. Province-wide, advocates have highlighted that many families face 12-18 month waits for key assessments or therapies inclusionbc.orginclusionbc.org, which can delay a student getting the supports they need. A parent might hear, “We’ve put your child on the list for a psycho-ed assessment; it should happen by next year.” During that wait, the school will often continue Tier 1 or 2 interventions, but a formal identification (which could bring an IEP, possibly an aide, etc.) is in limbo. This triaging ensures the limited number of psychologists serve the most urgent cases first and try to get to others as time permits.

Beyond assessments, waitlists can occur for access to specialist teachers, educational programs, or even basic support services. For example, if a district has a limited number of spots in a skills program or an alternative learning program, they may quietly cap enrolment and waitlist additional students. Some districts also have waitlists for Education Assistant support – not officially, since every designated child is entitled to some support, but effectively in how hours are allocated. A student might technically qualify for, say, full-day EA help, but if there aren’t enough EAs hired, they might get only part-time coverage. The family might be told that if more support becomes available, they’ll increase it – essentially waitlisting the child for the rest of the service. Waitlisting them from being fully included.

Rotating and shared support models: Another rationing mechanism is to provide supports on a rotational basis. For instance, instead of a student seeing a learning support teacher daily, they might see them twice a week. Or a resource teacher might rotate through several schools, visiting each school once a week to work with the highest-needs kids there. This spreads one person’s expertise over many children – breadth over depth. Some districts have mobile teams (for example, a “district resource team” that goes school to school for consults or short blocks of instruction). The upside is more schools get some service; the downside is no school gets enough service to fully address all needs continuously. Parents might observe that a specialist only comes occasionally – that is by design due to limited staffing. In rural areas, this is often the only way to provide anything at all (because hiring separate specialists for every community is not feasible). Even in urban settings, we see rotating models: e.g., a speech therapist might schedule each child on her caseload for therapy once every two weeks, essentially rationing her hours among dozens of students. Compare this to a medically recommended therapy frequency (perhaps weekly or twice weekly) and you see the shortfall. But given maybe one SLP per 100s of kids who need speech support, that’s the compromise made.

In summary, districts manage scarcity by instituting criteria and systems that match students to the scarce resources as “fairly” or efficiently as they can. There’s an inherent triage: the most severe or pressing needs get priority for intensive support, others get more generic or intermittent help. From an institutional perspective, this is a rational way to allocate limited support. From a family perspective, it often feels like your child’s needs have to reach a crisis point before full help kicks in – and until then, you get half-measures or a spot in a long queue. The next section will delve into how some of these delays are built into procedures (and sometimes feel like run-around), which is another facet of how scarcity is institutionalised.

Delays and “wait and see” as policy

Bureaucratic processes in education can themselves act as a mechanism to handle scarcity. Procedural deferral refers to the built-in delays or hoops that families and school staff must jump through before a student accesses a high-cost support. These procedures are often justified as best practice or due diligence, but they also serve to buy time and conserve resources.

One common example is the referral and assessment cycle for special needs support. School districts typically require that a School-Based Team (SBT) process be followed: when a teacher has concerns about a student, the SBT reviews the case, recommends interventions, and monitors progress over a period of time media.vsb.bc.ca media.vsb.bc.ca. Only after trying a series of interventions will the team refer the student for a district-level assessment or specialised service. This is pedagogically sound – you don’t rush to label a child without trying some strategies first – but it can also stretch out the timeline before extra help is given. If resources (like psychologist time) were abundant, the team might still do those interventions while quickly scheduling an assessment. But in a scarce system, the unwritten goal is to filter out cases that might resolve with minimal intervention so that you only spend specialist time on those who truly need it. Thus the “wait and see” approach becomes policy: try some classroom adaptations for a term, collect data, then reconvene – by then, some students might improve enough that no further action is taken, and only the persistent cases move forward. This delays how many kids hit the queue for costly support at any one time.

Another form of procedural deferral is requiring multiple layers of approval. For example, some districts have committees that must approve an Education Assistant for a student or enrolment in a special program. A school might apply in the spring for additional EA hours for a child, but a district panel will review all such applications and allocate a limited pool of EA staffing for the fall. If the panel says “we can only grant an extra half-time EA, not a full-time as requested,” the decision is final at least until mid-year. The process is a gatekeeper to ensure scarce EA hours are rationed. From the parent’s side, this feels like bureaucracy – you have to wait while your case is discussed in a meeting you can’t attend, and you may be told the outcome is less than hoped. But it’s how districts keep from overshooting their budget: by controlling approvals centrally and often setting high bars for justification (e.g., demonstrating that a student is an extreme safety risk without an aide, etc., effectively a threshold).

Deferral can also take the form of partial or temporary solutions. One stark example is when students are placed on reduced school days because the school cannot support them full-time. This unfortunately happens for some children with complex needs or aggressive behaviour. The school might tell a parent, “For now, we think it’s best Johnny attends for half days, while we work on a plan.” The underlying issue might be that Johnny really needs a one-to-one support person or a smaller setting, but there isn’t one available. So the procedure becomes sending him home for the afternoon – a deferment of full inclusion. For example, a 9-year-old girl who, lacking an autism diagnosis and corresponding supports, was only attending 1.5 hours a day because the school would call the parent to pick her up when her behaviour escalated inclusionbc.org. This situation stretched on because she was waiting over a year for an autism assessment inclusionbc.org, and in the meantime, without the “magic paper” proving she had that designation, she didn’t qualify for certain funded supports. The school’s stop-gap was effectively to limit her attendance – a clear deferral of education. This is an extreme case, but it’s illustrative of how far things can go when resources are lacking. The family was caught in a procedural nightmare: no diagnosis, no services; no services, the child fails at school; she struggles, they cut her hours; cutting hours isn’t a solution, but it’s all they could do. And until external agencies completed their process (the assessment), the education system kind of spun its wheels. In bureaucratic terms, the school can say she’s “receiving an adjusted program to meet her needs” – in reality, she’s barely in school. Such measures are usually framed as temporary, but some children spend months or years on these reduced schedules, effectively deferred from full participation in school due to unmitigated needs.

Less severely, deferral happens in everyday little ways: a learning support teacher might tell a parent, “Let’s try this reading app for a few months and see if it helps, then we’ll decide about further testing.” Or a principal might say, “We’ll monitor your child’s progress closely this term before considering an individual aide.” These are genuine efforts, but also serve to delay potentially costly steps (like bringing in a full-time aide). There is hope the child will improve and not need the costly step; if they don’t, then by the time the support is provided, significant time may have passed. This can be frustrating for families who feel they are always in a trial phase or on the cusp of help that never quite materialises.

To be fair, not all procedural delay is malicious or solely budget-driven – some is about finding the right support and not jumping to intrusive measures. However, in a well-resourced system, interventions and evaluations could proceed in parallel (you intervene and evaluate quickly). In our system, they often proceed in sequence due to limited personnel. The Ministry of Education’s own Inclusive Education manual emphasises early identification and intervention, but on the ground the timing often slips. Inclusion advocates have called for things like “eliminate wait-times for psycho-educational assessments” inclusionbc.org, recognising that timely assessment is key to getting support. They also call for cross-ministerial support (Education, Health, Children & Family Development) working together so kids don’t fall through cracks while waiting inclusionbc.org. Until significant funding and service increases occur, districts will likely continue using procedural slow lanes to cope with demand. As a parent or advocate, it helps to recognise when “more data collection” or “come back in three months” is being used as a stalling tactic versus when it’s truly in the student’s interest. Often it’s a bit of both: school teams genuinely want to try everything they can in class, but they also know if that fails, the next steps could be a long haul.

Reframing absence as design

A notable way scarcity is rationalised is through the language and messaging used by school districts. Bureaucratic language and educational jargon can put a positive or at least neutral spin on what, in plainer terms, are cuts or shortfalls. This isn’t to deceive maliciously, but it is a form of PR and compliance – districts need to show they’re meeting obligations and following best practices, even if resources are thin. As a result, they often frame the conversation around strategy and educational philosophy rather than scarcity. Here are some common examples of euphemisms and reframing:

• “Tiered support” and “multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS)” – As discussed, this is presented as a way to meet each student at their level of need. Districts proudly talk about their tiered intervention models. In correspondence to parents, they might say “we use a tiered approach to provide support – your child is getting targeted small-group help (Tier 2) right now”. What isn’t said is that Tier 3 (individual intensive help) might effectively be capped or triaged due to limited staff. The absence of one-on-one support is recast as an intentional design where only those who truly need Tier 3 get it. It can be hard for a parent to argue against a tiered model – it sounds logical – though the parent’s perspective is often “my child does truly need more help!” The district might respond in terms of process and data (“We have to see if they respond to the current interventions first.”), again emphasising the plan (tiers) over the limitation (not enough specialists).
• “Flexible staffing” – This term is generally used in internal documents and strategic plans. It paints a picture of an agile system that can deploy human resources wherever needed. For instance, one district plan states it strives for “an adaptive organization that… responds to the need for flexible staffing based on evidence of student learning needs.” media.sd64.bc.ca. This sounds progressive – who wouldn’t want staffing to reflect actual needs? However, in practice, flexible staffing often means no one has a guaranteed level of support. One year a school might have two learning support teachers; the next year, if scores look better or numbers go down (or simply if budget is tight), it may be “flexed” down to one teacher. The term “staffing flexibility” glosses over the instability and reductions it can entail. It also implies that if a need isn’t evidenced by data, staffing won’t be allocated – which can disadvantage things that are harder to quantify. For parents, hearing that “staffing is flexible” could mean that support your child counted on might be here today, gone tomorrow, depending on some formula or shifting priorities.
• “Complex needs” and other terminology – Districts frequently refer to students with “complex needs” or “high needs.” This is a legitimate descriptor (some students have multiple or severe challenges requiring intensive support). But its usage can be strategic: by emphasising complex needs, districts justify concentrating resources there. For example, Vancouver noted an increase in “students with complex needs” in recent yearsmedia.vsb.bc.ca and uses that to explain why they must adjust how they staff programs. The narrative becomes about focusing on the most complex cases. The unspoken flip side is that students deemed “less complex” will get a more generic solution (e.g. stay in the regular class with adaptations, since the specialists are busy with the complex cases). So, while it’s important to acknowledge high-need students, the term can indirectly rationalise why moderate-need students see less of the pie.
• “Inclusive education” commitments and creative compliance – All districts will assert that they are fulfilling the Ministry’s inclusion policy. They highlight efforts like training teachers in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), implementing social-emotional learning programs, using “consultative models” of support, etc. For example, Vancouver’s budget notes investment in training for UDL and new literacy interventions, and a move toward serving students in neighbourhood schools rather than segregated programs media.vsb.bc.ca media.vsb.bc.ca. These are positive steps philosophically. However, some advocates caution that sometimes “inclusive education” is interpreted as “do inclusion without additional funding.” By emphasising that general educators can handle diverse learners with the right training (UDL, differentiated instruction), districts can appear to be modernising and complying with inclusion – which is good – but it can also be a way to cope with having fewer specialist staff. In plain language: regular classrooms are expected to handle more, because we can’t provide as many separate supports. When a district says “we’re keeping students in their home schools and not moving them to special programs,” it could be from a genuine belief in inclusion, but it’s convenient if also they save money by not running those separate special programs. Critics have pointed out that sometimes “cost-cutting measures [are] dressed up as innovation” instituteforpubliceducation.org. For instance, a district might launch a new “blended learning support model” and close some special classes, selling it as a 21st-century approach – but part of the motivation was to reduce staffing and facilities costs. The IPE/BC commentary on Surrey’s situation bluntly stated that the driver of some changes is “first and foremost about dollars and cents,” even if publicly it’s framed in terms of student success instituteforpubliceducation.org.
• Soft language for cuts – When budget cuts happen, districts rarely say “we are cutting support for students.” Instead, you see language like Surrey’s: “implementing a reduction in inclusive education support through attrition” surreyschools.ca or another district might say “we are streamlining programs” or “restructuring our support services.” “Efficiency,” “sustainability,” and “re-alignment” are words often used. In Vancouver a few years ago, there was talk of “redesigning the special education service delivery model” which led to some programs being eliminated – but it was framed as improving service coherence. From the inside, staff and parents often decoded these as cuts, but the official reports didn’t use that word. One reason for this careful wording is that districts must show they are meeting Ministry standards – they wouldn’t want to openly admit they can’t support all students, even if that’s the underlying reality. So the language focuses on what they are doing (“we have allocated an additional X teachers to support literacy intervention”) rather than what they have stopped doing.
• Emphasising shared responsibility and doing “more with less.” You’ll often hear acknowledgments that “yes, it’s challenging, but we’re all working smarter.” For instance, a district might respond to concerns by highlighting that “classroom teachers, learning support teachers, and EAs are collaborating flexibly to meet needs”. This signals that rather than every student getting a dedicated expert, the team is pooling efforts. Collaboration is certainly good, but in context it can mean the resources are spread thin and they’re compensating with teamwork and creativity. It’s a positive framing of a tough situation.

Lastly, districts use compliance language to assert that they’re following all required policies. They’ll reference the School Act, inclusive education policy, etc., to show they’re in line. For example, Surrey in justifying examining programs said it must ensure they align with “the provincial curriculum and the district’s responsibilities under the School Act”surreyschools.ca. This can be a way to legitimise cuts – e.g., if a program isn’t mandated, they can cut it and say it was not a core responsibility. For inclusion, districts will say “we provide services consistent with Ministry guidelines,” which might simply mean they do the minimum the Ministry expects, even if parents feel it’s not enough.

In summary, the bureaucratic language reframes scarcity as if it’s a series of intentional choices or modern strategies. A parent reading district documents or listening to officials might hear lots about “tiered supports,” “aligning resources,” “focusing on complex needs,” “flexible service delivery,” and “innovation,” but rarely will they hear “we don’t have enough money/staff, so we had to cut back.” Yet behind the scenes, as one education commentator noted, “while the expectations on schools have increased, the funding and support has declined. This is simply not sustainable…” instituteforpubliceducation.org, and “boards are being driven to make decisions based on grossly inadequate funding” instituteforpubliceducation.org. The public rationale will always emphasise students’ best interests and efficiency, not the scarcity driving those decisions. Knowing this, parents and advocates can learn to “read between the lines” of bureaucratic statements. When you see a phrase like “due to staffing adjustments, services will be provided on a consultative basis,” it likely means a reduction in direct service. Recognising the euphemisms can empower stakeholders to ask more pointed questions and advocate for honesty and more resources.

Comparing district approaches: Vancouver, Surrey, and Cariboo-Chilcotin

It’s useful to see how these general practices play out in different districts:

• Vancouver (SD39): A large urban district with a diverse student population, Vancouver often leads in policy development and has somewhat more internal capacity. It has tried to manage scarcity by improving processes – e.g., eliminating formal waitlists by using monitor lists and extra assessment clinics media.vsb.bc.ca media.vsb.bc.ca. Vancouver also engages with parent advocacy (their DPAC has an Inclusive Education Working Group) and has analysed data to adjust services (noting trends like more autism designations, difficulty staffing specialists, etc. media.vsb.bc.ca media.vsb.bc.ca). Even so, Vancouver has a significant funding gap to cover each year for inclusion, and it employs tactics like not backfilling resource teacher absences immediately media.vsb.bc.ca. Vancouver communicates about inclusion in terms of building capacity at all schools and moving away from segregated programs media.vsb.bc.ca, which aligns with philosophy but also conveniently means fewer separate classes to staff. The district has not been immune to cuts – it has considered reducing support staff and other expenses during tight budgets, though recent provincial supplement boosts and careful planning have helped it avoid the most drastic measures seen in Surrey.
• Surrey (SD36): Surrey is characterised by explosive enrolment growth and capital shortfalls – hundreds of portables and overcrowded schools instituteforpubliceducation.org. This means even if their per-student funding is used efficiently, the sheer number of new students each year puts pressure on operating funds (because money must be spent on stopgap measures like portables, which the province often doesn’t fully coverinstituteforpubliceducation.org). Surrey has had very public battles for funding; when shortfalls hit, they’ve been quite frank, as in 2025 asking the government for emergency help and still having to cut servicessurreyschools.ca. The severity of Surrey’s cuts (e.g., 50 EA positions cut, special programs closedinstituteforpubliceducation.org) stands out. Surrey also trialed an online/hybrid learning model for some students to alleviate overcrowding, which some saw as an innovative choice, but observers noted it was likely driven by lack of school space and funding – essentially a cost-saving measure presented as a new option instituteforpubliceducation.org. Surrey’s communication tends to stress how they are managing growth and still prioritising “essential services,” and they have openly said they can’t keep making cuts without harming students vancouver.citynews.ca. The tension between compliance (keeping class sizes as required, meeting inclusion needs on paper) and reality (not enough classrooms or staff) is very visible in Surrey. Parents there have been active (Surrey DPAC, for example, has rallied against the cuts), and the district somewhat backs them by highlighting the need for more funding. In Surrey’s case, scarcity has led to some extreme steps like turning away new in-catchment enrolments at certain full schools – something basically unheard of until recentlyvancouver.citynews.ca. This shows that when pushed to the brink, a district may even challenge the expectation that every neighbourhood child can attend their local school (Surrey had to redirect some to less crowded schools vancouver.citynews.ca).
• Cariboo-Chilcotin (SD27) and similar smaller districts: These districts operate in a different context – stable or declining enrolment, often higher per-capita needs (including a significant Indigenous student population in many rural districts, some of whom may have additional support needs or trauma-related needs). Scarcity here might not make headlines, but it’s felt in day-to-day limited services. For instance, SD27 has worked on creating “inclusive learning communities” and improving graduation rates, but with limited staff, they might rely on multi-grade supports or external agencies. We saw a hint that SD27 coordinates with Interior Health for things like daycare or possibly therapy waitlists sd27.bc.ca – indicating a need to leverage community resources because the district alone can’t provide enough. A family in a rural area might experience even longer waits for assessments (since a district psychologist might visit a region only occasionally). They might also have fewer program choices (no special autism classroom or alternate program nearby – the child must fit into the regular school with whatever itinerant supports exist). On the flip side, smaller communities sometimes have tight-knit collaboration – everyone knows the child and tries to pitch in – but goodwill can’t replace specialist intervention when needed. The language in small districts’ plans often mirrors big ones (“inclusive mindset, tiered supports, etc.”) but the implementation might simply be one learning support teacher doing all those tiers as best as possible. Scarcity is very tangible when a single person wears many hats.

Across all three examples, the patterns of operationalising scarcity are present, but the scale differs. Vancouver can marshal some extra stop-gap measures (like hiring retired psychs for summer assessments) and has a large budget to shuffle funds within. Surrey has no slack at all – growth ate it up – so they had to make very public cuts and even break some norms (like capping enrolment). Cariboo-Chilcotin might not cut programs (there may be none to cut), but instead they just have minimal services from the start. In every case, the district administration will use careful language to reassure that students are supported, justifying the approach taken. And in every case, parents of kids with special or extra needs often report that they must fight for support, experience waitlists or delays, and see their child getting less than what they feel is appropriate.

Conclusion

Scarcity in BC’s education system is an ever-present undercurrent that shapes policy and practice. School districts have effectively built a set of mechanisms to manage scarcity on a daily basis. They allocate funding in ways to cover deficits and juggle shortfalls media.vsb.bc.ca bctf.ca. They make staffing choices that favour cost control – from not replacing absent support teachersmedia.vsb.bc.ca, to cutting positions via attritionsurreyschools.ca, to sharing staff across multiple needs. They set thresholds and use tiered models to ration which students get the most intensive help, often leaving others with intermittent or lower-tier support. They institutionalise delays through process – ensuring only the most persistent needs advance to scarce high-level resources, and sometimes literally asking families to wait months or years for servicesinclusionbc.orginclusionbc.org. Finally, they deploy bureaucratic and positive-sounding language to frame these actions as planned, pedagogically driven decisions rather than plainly stating “we don’t have enough to do more.” Terms like “tiered support,” “flexible staffing,” and “long-term sustainability” surreyschools.ca media.sd64.bc.ca create a narrative that everything is under control and methodical. Meanwhile, parents and advocates often see the practical impacts: support hours cut, aides spread thin, specialists hard to access, and a lot of “wait and see.”

For parents and education advocates, understanding these mechanisms is important. It’s not just about pointing fingers – it’s about recognising that many of these practices are systemic responses to funding limitations that individual principals or teachers have little power to change. Advocacy often targets the Ministry and government for increased funding, because as long as districts are forced to operate with inadequate resources, they will continue to triage and ration in these ways. The language of scarcity management can sometimes mask the need; thus, advocates push for transparency – for example, asking districts to publicly report how many students are on partial days, or how many are waiting for an assessment, or how many support staff positions are unfilled or cut. Such data, when brought to light, reinforces what the euphemisms try to soften: that many students are not getting the full support the inclusion policies promise.

It’s also worth noting that educators and administrators are usually not happy about this state of affairs either. When you read quotes from Surrey trustees calling the decisions “disheartening” surreyschools.ca or Vancouver reports noting the strain on staff, it’s clear this is not the vision anyone has for inclusive education. The people in the system are trying to make it work despite scarcity. But good intentions don’t fully mitigate the impacts on children and families.

In conclusion, BC school districts operationalise scarcity through a combination of budget tactics, prioritisation of needs, procedural controls, and careful messaging. By understanding these, parents and advocates can better navigate the system: knowing why a child might only get support X instead of Y, why things take so long, or what a vague phrase in a district letter really implies. It also underscores the larger point that true inclusion can’t be achieved on the cheap. Until the gap between needs and resources is closed, school districts will continue performing this delicate dance – implementing just enough support to claim inclusivity, while rationalizing why some support is inevitably absent. The hope among many families and educators is that increased investment and honest dialogues will eventually reduce the need for all these workarounds, and we can move from managing scarcity to genuinely meeting needs in our education system.

Sources: Connected references have been used throughout this report to provide evidence and examples from BC school districts and related analyses, including budget documents, news releases, and advocacy reports that highlight funding gaps, staff cuts, waitlists, and the language framing these issues bctf.ca surreyschools.ca media.vsb.bc.ca inclusionbc.org instituteforpubliceducation.org, among others. These illustrate the common patterns and specific cases of how scarcity is handled in practice across different BC districts.