Compliance culture
The school-wide expectation that students conform without question—regardless of their developmental stage, disability, or distress.
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The compliance trap: why IEP goals fail PDA students
Every IEP written for a PDA student begins with the same quiet betrayal. The team gathers — parents, teacher, learning support, maybe an administrator — and the goals are drafted in language that sounds like care: manage responsibilities with support, self-advocate before becoming overwhelmed, organise materials and meet deadlines. The phrases are familiar because they…
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When the complaint becomes the problem
The Canary Collective has published a piece Risk Assessment and Liability Management: The Hidden Function of Complaints that describes the process by which a parent raising legitimate concerns about their child’s education is transformed, through careful documentation and strategic delay, into a risk to be managed rather than a voice to be heard. The article…
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Exclusion is economically irrational and the hidden costs of refusing accommodation
BC schools spend more money refusing accommodation than providing it. Learn when hiring a lawyer becomes the only fiscally rational choice for your family.
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What 8 years of advocacy took from our family
I advocate because I love my children and I want them to be well. Because I know the accommodations they require are entirely tenable, requiring only modest shifts in how adults think and respond. Because it is unbearable to watch them be slowly debilitated by a system that insists their needs are excessive and their…
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The dishwasher, the hard drive, and what counts as progress when your child survives school
My son unloaded the dishwasher today without being asked. This is the first chore I can remember him doing of his own accord since he was a toddler—before school taught him that compliance means danger, before demand avoidance became the fortress protecting what remained of his autonomy, before each day required such total depletion that…
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Inclusive schooling solutions
I have spent years documenting institutional harm. Documentation feels natural to me, perhaps because my professional background as solution architect and business analyst. Professionally, I’m used to solving problems, but in education, not having classroom experience, I feel very clear that I can say what works for my kid, but I can’t say what works…
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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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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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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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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…
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Collective punishment at Vancouver School Board: when one disabled child’s behaviour closes the playground
On December 20, 2017, my kindergarten child Robin went onto an ice field during recess at his school in Vancouver. Robin loved ice—the sensory experience, the visual shimmer, the way it cracked and moved under small feet. The school had asked all students to stay away from the ice for safety reasons throughout the morning,…
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The optimal funding model for inclusive education
Inclusive education does not fail because children are too complex. It fails because funding systems reward denial, privatise enforcement, and treat disability as an exceptional cost rather than a predictable feature of human populations. A functional model already exists. It is not radical. It is aligned with what inclusive education actually requires, rather than with…
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When schools ask disabled children to accept being hurt
I used to have a pretty good dialogue with my kids, before they experienced a lot of institutional harm. The conversations flow less freely now and less seldom, but back then, we chatted a lot and I often recorded the conversations, for proof, having experienced enough gaslighting from the district to know I wouldn’t be…
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Solving school concerns in BC: what districts tell you and what you need to know
The Vancouver School Board presents its conflict resolution process as a fair, accessible pathway for parents and students to address concerns that significantly affect a student’s education, health, or safety. According to policy materials, the process: This framing positions the district as collaborative and responsive, suggests most issues resolve through goodwill and dialogue, and casts…
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The question they refused to ask: adequate funding and the architecture of denial in BC schools
Between 2017 and 2020, BC reviewed education funding. The question asked: designation or prevalence? The question refused: what would adequate funding cost?
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When evidence changes nothing: what 2,842 families reveal about institutional refusal
The International Council of Multiple Birth Organisations published a study in 2020 examining school placement decisions for twins and higher-order multiples across eighteen countries, surveying 2,842 families whose children had attended school for at least one year. The findings confirm what families of multiples already know from lived experience: schools operate placement policies that prioritise…
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A school advocacy vocabulary
What families experience in schools is often described as a series of unfortunate incidents: a meltdown here, a missed accommodation there, a relationship breakdown framed as “complex family dynamics.” But these events are not random, isolated, or accidental. They are patterned. They recur across schools, districts, and provinces. They follow recognisable logics, deploy familiar language,…
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The good twin, the bad twin, and the system that needed both
Before school taught them roles, they played tea party—taking turns serving and being served. Seven years later, I can’t say with certainty whether one would fetch the fire extinguisher if the other caught flame.
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School discipline in British Columbia: what parents of disabled children need to know
In British Columbia, school discipline is usually described as a neutral, even benevolent process. Brochures reassure parents that discipline is not punishment, that it teaches self-control, and that consequences help children learn responsibility. The Vancouver School Board’s Discipline at Home and School guide follows this script exactly. It explains that: On paper, this sounds reasonable.…