Student Exclusion
When children are pushed out of classrooms through isolation, suspension, or informal removals.
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Columneetza Junior Secondary (SD27 Cariboo‑Chilcotin): a neurodiversity‑informed conduct critique
Columneetza Junior Secondary School 2024-2025 Code of Conduct affirms a mission of fostering respect, individual growth, and a sense of belonging within both school and community. It names safety, caring, and order as essential conditions for “purposeful learning.” The document outlines rights, responsibilities, and behavioural expectations for students and broader school actors, including parents and…
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The moral cost of leaving children in fight-or-flight
Robin was eleven the day he fell and came up swinging. It was recess, and something had happened—a misstep, a bump, a collision on uneven ground. His body hit the pavement. And when he rose, disoriented and humiliated, the first thing in his path was his best friend. So he struck him, over and over.…
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How schools misuse disability designations to deny support
When I asked why my child couldn’t have full-day support—the kind that made the difference between attending school and refusing to enter the classroom—I was told, “He’s not eligible.” Eligible only for part-time. Eligible only for half-days. Eligible, it turned out, to fall apart quietly in the coatroom, so the system could pretend he was…
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Just when it starts working, they take it away
The cruelty of temporary support in BC schools. There is a particular kind of cruelty in getting what your child needs—finally—and knowing it will be taken away. In the fall of 2017, our family reached a breaking point. Our child Robin was refusing school, destroying the classroom, and coming home dysregulated and despondent. The school…
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She graduated and this is what she learned
On raising a badass advocate, unintentionally. I didn’t set out to raise an advocate—I set out to raise a child. A child who might feel safe in her body and steady in her breath, who might look out at the world and feel drawn toward it rather than braced against it, who might trust her…
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Repairing institutional harm after coercive control
This piece is written in memory of a friend whose life was slowly extinguished by institutional betrayal, coercive control, and the grinding weight of being unheard. When a school inadvertently contributes to coercive control, the harm may be quiet, but it is not small. For the child, it means being unprotected. For the parent, it…
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$10K and an NDA
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…
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The path to justice: legal versus public record
The courts may offer compensation, but rarely truth. The legal path demands silence in exchange for settlement. The public path asks you to speak while you’re still bleeding. Neither is easy. But only one builds a record that helps the next family survive.
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The bait and switch: What inclusion really looks like at the VSB
Every September, I walk into school meetings with the same cautious hope. We’ve done everything right. The diagnoses are up to date. The IEP is in place. The reports are filed — more than thirty of them over the years, from audiologists, psychiatrists, speech-language pathologists, behaviour consultants, and occupational therapists. You’d think that would mean…
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A costly legal habit at the Vancouver School Board
As families fight for inclusive education and basic classroom support, the Vancouver School Board is pouring millions into legal fees—more than triple what it spent just a few years ago. Public records reveal a dramatic spike in payments to Harris & Company, the district’s longtime law firm, coinciding with a high-profile property lawsuit and growing…
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The end of the school year never feels like a celebration
We are scouring the comments for signs that our kids are OK. Supported. Happy. Trying not to spiral when we read ‘developing’ or ’emerging’ or don’t see the words, ‘It was a pleasure to have your child in my class this year.
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What would it really cost to fix the problem?
We talk so much about the cost of inclusion—as if it’s indulgent, optional, something that must be justified—but we rarely talk about the cost of exclusion. And those costs are everywhere: in emergency rooms, in overburdened case files, in classrooms where distress goes unseen. When schools can’t support disabled students, families fall apart trying to…
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We shouldn’t be enemies
I took my daughter for a manicure this week. She’s graduating from grade 7. A milestone. A moment that felt almost ordinary—slideshow, applause, plastic chairs, nervous grins—and yet there was nothing ordinary about what it took to get there. Vocabulary for what happened Class change She spent seven months of this school year outside the…
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On graduation and the grievability of disabled children
I’ll try to be normal at my daughter’s graduation, even as I grieve a system that quietly erased her twin and expects no one to notice.
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Advocacy toolkit: resources for families navigating school harm
Some of us arrived at advocacy slowly—one red flag at a time. Some of us were pushed into it suddenly, when everything fell apart. Some of us have been writing emails in our heads for years. Some of us are just now finding the words. Wherever you are in the process, this toolkit is for…
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Galiano Community School (SD64): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
The 2022–23 Code of Conduct for Galiano Community School is unusually rich in aspirational language. It describes a community of care rooted in mutual respect, emotional development, and responsive teaching. It affirms the BC Human Rights Code, references Positive Behaviour Support, and anchors its behavioural framework in the values of SOLE—Respect and Care for Self, Others,…
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Drawn and quartered: Sibling trauma, institutional containment, and the erasure of care for families with multiples
When you are the parent of twins—especially autistic/ADHD twins—you learn very quickly that the education system can’t hold both of them at once. Support is rationed. Attention is rationed. Empathy is rationed. The school system does not say this aloud, of course. It claims to treat every child as an individual. But as soon as…
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Not everyone gets a slideshow
He should have been graduating too, but he isn’t. After years of support that never arrived, of being punished for distress instead of helped through it, my son left school quietly—while the world carried on with its ceremonies, its slideshows, its celebrations of children who were never forced to disappear in order to survive.
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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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Maybe tomorrow: reflections on goal post shifting and the economics of access
There were accommodations on paper and endless lip-service meetings. But none of it happened in the classroom. And every time we did what was asked—another intake, another form, another plan—the goalpost moved again. We weren’t asking for miracles. We were asking to be seen as disabled. And instead, we were told to be more positive,…
