Risk Management
The art of making harm survivable for the institution. Risk management, in accessibility contexts, is not about preventing harm—it is about minimising liability, containing blame, and preserving institutional reputation. This tag gathers writing on how the language of safety is wielded to suppress truth, delay response, and obscure the real risks faced by those with the least power.
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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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VSB’s FESL report: the aesthetics of performative accessibility
An analysis of how VSB’s FESL report performs inclusion through language and process while avoiding measurement, accountability, and material change.
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The behaviourist spine of BC’s urgent-response systems
In Urgent behaviour intervention teams in major BC school districts I shared research which identified the intervention teams in many of the larger districts in BC, describing their processes and roles, mostly in the language that they describe their services. This essay attempts to analyse those systems through a disability-justice lens, revealing how roles, processes,…
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When you finally get a “good” IEP
There was an email, sent in a moment of exhaustion, where I mentioned that I was considering a Human Rights complaint. The next IEP meeting rolled around, and suddenly the draft was almost unrecognisable—careful, thoughtful, neurodiversity-affirming. For the first time in eight years, it sounded like something written for my child rather than about my child. It should have…
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Compliance discourse vs. disability justice in BC’s education system
Official VSB documents reveal an emphasis on student compliance and disciplinary consequences, with little mention of disability accommodations. For example, the VSB’s District Code of Conduct underscores “a fair and consistent range of consequences, including suspension and change in educational programming, for student misconduct” media.vsb.bc.ca. The Code enumerates expected student behaviours and infractions (e.g. attending regularly,…
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The afterlife of austerity
When public institutions are forced to survive under prolonged austerity, something deeper than budgets begins to break—something in the connective tissue of trust, of care, of the quiet, ordinary belief that systems exist to serve people. The myth of resilience—the comforting story we tell ourselves about teachers with hearts of gold and staff who always…
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“For your own good”: How schools punish children through food, control, and bodily discipline
Through curriculum, posters, reward systems, and lunchroom rules, schools encode a silent but relentless message: that certain bodies are dangerous, excessive, or deviant. Fat children are positioned as futures to be prevented. Neurodivergent children whose eating diverges from the norm are framed as problems to be solved. The desk that squeezes, the poster that moralises,…
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Don’t wait until the lawsuits
By the time harm becomes legally actionable, it has already become unbearable. If people are still talking to you, they are still hoping you will change. Institutions often ask the wrong question When institutions receive stories of harm—when a parent names systemic exclusion, or a student speaks quietly of despair, or a staff member shares…
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Cariboo–Chilcotin School District (SD27): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
Cariboo-Chilcotin is one of the most geographically dispersed and demographically complex districts in British Columbia. Spanning small rural towns and remote Indigenous communities—including sites of historic and intergenerational trauma—SD27 faces significant challenges in providing consistent, inclusive, and safe environments for all learners. In June 2024, the Board adopted Policy 390: Safe and Caring School Communities, replacing…
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Performative accessibility in British Columbia public education
Too often, accessibility in schools is performance, not practice. Symbolic gestures and endless buzzwords cannot replace the courage to name harm, take responsibility, and commit to structural change. Until then, access plans remain brochures—and inclusion a stage set.