Month: April 2025

Facebook Post – On BCEdAccess Blog

Hello Everyone,

It’s time to get loud.

I have a volunteer role outside of my Speaking UP BC blogging and PATH. I am the Chair of BCEdAccess Society. I have been a part of the Facebook group for years. I am sharing a blog I wrote through my role and volunteer work with BCEdAccess. This is the first time I am sharing a blog through my own personal Facebook page. I hummed and hawed over whether this was a good idea or not. To blend the two of them. But I have decided to do it anyways, as the content of the blog, I really want to share.

The purpose of sharing this blog as much as I can is to provide a seed of thought and spark a conversation. A questioning and analysis of how this education system is functioning. Seeing whether you agree with what I wrote or not, is not my purpose. Whatever your view is on the funding issues our school districts are facing, please find people in your life and start a conversation about your thoughts. I’d love it even more if one of those people were your local MLA.

I haven’t really talked about it publicly but I was an EA in the school system for years. I did my training and student placements in hearing and Deaf schools in Ontario, worked in Montreal, and then again here in BC. I know what working education is really like. So, I see the education system from a staffs perspective and I understand it from a parents perspective. I have friends who are teachers and EAs. When I was working in schools and had discussions with staff, there were things that were happening and we wanted to speak out about it and talk to parents. We were crossing our fingers that parents were going to rally together and fight the school. Teachers and EAs cannot speak out about their working conditions publicly or even students learning conditions. The closest they come to being able to do that is when they are on strike. Other than that, they are forced to keep quiet or they will lose their jobs. Even then, there was a legal decision centred around teachers posting flyers educating parents about the educational losses that were happening. Teachers were identifying the harms that the cuts would have on student learning with the statements “Our Children’s Education is Threatened” and this went to a hearing to analyze their freedom of expression issues. Their employers wanted them to shut up. I will link the case below.

People who work in the education system need to be very careful what they say publicly. Even what kind of content they “like” on social media. There is even policy behind this. So on social media, teachers and EAs need to be silent or risk their employment. We are dealing with educators leaving their jobs at exceptionally high numbers. Districts are reporting issues with high absenteeism. Districts are so desperate for adults they are hiring people who have not been trained as teachers or EAs.

The blog from BCEdAccess was posted yesterday, on a holiday, when many people would have plans or be enjoying the long weekend. In less than 12 hours, this blog became the second most viewed blog on our website, close to reaching the numbers of our most viewed blog which took days to reach that number of views. On my personal Speaking Up BC my stats jumped to numbers as if I had posted the blog on my own site. The number of new viewers skyrocketed and what people were mostly viewing was my blog “Why can’t we just sue the government?”, which I will link below.

A lot of stuff is shared in secret. People are sharing my blog amongst their colleagues, friends and family and they are just not sharing this publicly. I want parents to know, that just because you don’t see school staff or trustees in the media ripping the government to pieces doesn’t mean they aren’t advocating behind closed doors. They may have duct tape over their mouths publicly, but I don’t.

We all want a better education system. Budget cuts and the chronic underfunding impacts every single person and worst of all, it impacts our children, which builds the foundation for the rest of their life.

I don’t need people to comment publicly on my work. The feedback I get on whether I have planted a seed of thought, I get through website statistics. I know the ones that have stirred conversation. This blog is one of them. And the work week hasn’t even started yet.

However you view and feel the impacts of the chronic underfunding and the cuts that are coming this year, please talk about it with other people. And if one of them is your MLA, thank you!

Here is the blog posted on the BCEdAccess website

https://bcedaccess.com/…/scarcity-in-education-harmful…

Here is the hearing decision BCTF and the BC Public School Employers

https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcla/doc/2004/2004canlii94306/2004canlii94306.html

Here are my blogs

Why Can’t we Just Sue the Government

&

Budget time

Another new HR decision – Intersecting Identity – Self-Representing Parent – A win!

I have written so many posts that start with New HR decision that it’s starting to sound ridiculous.

So, yes this is another new one. I know we just had a new one a couple of days ago.

I can’t tell you how exciting this is. This is the month of April, only four months into 2025 and we are already at 5 decisions with more to come. This is going to be quite the year!!

Is the Ministry of Education and Child Care paying attention to all of this????

They better wake up!

Here we go.

Decision #5 – This parent is self-representing. They won. The complaint is fully proceeding.

Child (by the Parent) v. School District, 2025 BCHRT 89

This case involves a couple of protected grounds.

[3] The Child identifies as Black and of African race, ancestry and place of origin. The Child has a mild Autism Spectrum Disorder [ ASD ], which the Parent describes as largely diagnosed from his late speech and asymptomatic.

This is a timeliness complaint

What is interesting about this case from an analysis point of view is that there were gaps between the discrimination and multiple allegations were beyond the one-year time limit, and yet it was still accepted.

[25] Having found multiple arguable contraventions of the Code , that are both timely and out of time, it is necessary to next consider whether the late-filed allegations form part of a continuing contravention.

[26] I first considered whether the allegations are of a similar character for the purposes of determining the existence of a continuing contravention of the Code . The School District argues the timely allegations are dissimilar because the timely allegations involve different children at different schools. I disagree with the School District. From my review of the allegations in their entirety, I agree with the Child that they involve the School District’s failure to properly respond in series of altercations where white male students harmed the Child for reasons related to his race, colour, ancestry, place of origin and mental disability. At the same time, the allegations are of a similar character because the Child alleges the School District’s repeated responses to all these incidents were unfair to him for reasons related to the personal characteristics identified. In my view, the similar character of these allegations is not affected in any material way because they occurred at different schools and with different white male children.

[27] I have next considered the existence of gaps between allegations. I have determined that there are no significant gaps for the purposes of s. 22(2) of the Code in this case. I disagree with the School District’s approach to this question by looking at the entire timespan for the allegations in question. In my view, it is more appropriate to look at the length of time between allegations to determine whether they occurred in succession. Here, there were gaps of half of year to about nine months between most of the allegations and these are explained by the somewhat randomness of serious incidents happening when the white male students engaged the Child. The only possibly significant gap in my view, occurred between the November 2019 incident and the Spring 2021 incident. However, this gap is easily explained by the fact that during most of 2020 schools were closed due to pandemic restrictions and the Child was not in physical proximity to the students in question.

[28] Overall, I am satisfied the Child’s allegations from the June 2018 incident to the Spring 2021 incident allegations are of a similar nature in succession to the timely October 2021 incidents allegations. As such, the Complaint is a timely continuing contravention of the Code and it is, therefore, unnecessary for me to determine whether it is in the public interest to allow any late filed allegations to proceed.

There are multiple allegations of bullying connected to racism and what I would label as ableism.

Here is an example.

[13] On October 20, 2021, the Child alleges three higher grade white boys followed him into the bathroom and one of the boys intentionally slammed a bathroom stall door into his face. The Child alleges this incident resulted in him chipping his two front teeth. He alleges the School District principal and vice principal were unmoved by the incident and did not want to report it to the police. The Child alleges the vice principal kept blaming him for screaming and shouting and rolling around on the floor as an attempt to magnify his autism behaviour to justify the other boys’ wrongdoing. Once again, the Child alleges the School District protected the white assailants from receiving any blame for the incident. This allegedly included the School District saying that they did not know which boy had caused the harm to the Child. The Child alleges this incident was a good example of the School District’s staff demonstrating their inclination to favour white children in altercations involving him [the October 20, 2021, incident ]

I encourage everyone to read this case in full.

The other human rights case that was connected to discriminatory bullying is this one. I’ll be adding this case now to that page as well.

Way to go, self-represented parent!

Accepted Human Rights Complaints in Education

Here is a list of some key human rights cases that were accepted and valid complaints under the Human Rights Code. There are more human rights complaints to explore in Canlii. For instructions on how to use Canlii click here.

It is very helpful to know what gets accepted by the BC Human Rights Tribunal. These examples give the public and the tribunal a peek into the education system. Exposure alone of these circumstances is advocacy and creates a data trail.

These cases can be used in our advocacy when communicating with the school.

EA not provided

IEP and designation not provided

Professional recommendations not included in IEP

Parents were not meaningfully consulted

Meaningful inquiry – The School didn’t investigate what the disability related barriers were and try to remove them

Equitable access to education – The Moore case

Hostile and rude teachers, not accommodating

Exclusion

Another exclusion example

Preventing a student from presenting at an assembly and mishandling an assembly incident.

Not providing reasonable accommodations – Dyslexia

Not being able to read, leaving for a private school – Dyslexia

Bullying

Allergies

Forced out of school (poor transition into high school)- paying for private school (Ontario)

Family Status (impact on the parent) – file within one year

Here is the page for a list of dismissals and timeliness applications over the last 10 years.

New Human Rights Decision – Professional Recommendations in IEP

2025 BCHRT 85 – BC Human Rights Tribunal

Child (by Parents) v. Surrey School District No. 36, 2025 BCHRT 85

More important learnings from human rights decisions!!

This is a dismissal application. Parts of their complaint were dismissed but the part that is continuing is the allegation that the school didn’t incorporate professional recommendations into their child’s IEP.

The human rights tribunal is accepting this as a valid complaint, and it is proceeding. This case can be used to enhance your advocacy.

[66] The Child alleges that the School Board lost or did not read many of the reports that were provided to them, and that as a result, the recommendations contained in those reports were not incorporated into their IEPs. Therefore, they say, the Child’s disabilities were not properly accommodated. The Child says that had the IEPs been developed in line with the medical and psychoeducational recommendations contained in the reports provided to the School Board, their Parents would not have had to intervene with private support services in order to keep the Child at grade level. They say that because the recommendations in the reports were not incorporated into the Child’s IEPs, the Parents were required to provide the Child with tutoring, vision therapy, and auditory therapy, along with other interventions.

[68] The School Board admits that certain of the recommendations contained in the psychoeducational assessment and other medical reports were not included in the Child’s IEPs. However, the School Board says that the IEPs developed for the Child “are consistent with the recognized supports for students with a learning disability like dyslexia within British Columbia.” They say that many of the recommendations from the psychoeducational assessment report in particular were specific to programs available in Colorado, not in BC. They say the IEPs that have been developed for the Child were consistent with the Child’s Ministry of Education designation and “the information regarding [the Child’s] learning needs”, including the provision of a learner support teacher as well as modifications implemented by the classroom teacher. They note that the Child’s progress reports indicate that they have progressed “well” and “overall at grade level”.

[72] While the School Board took steps through the IEPs to accommodate the Child, based on the materials before me, I am not persuaded that they are reasonably certain to prove they took all reasonable and practical steps to remove the disability-related barriers faced by the Child. This allegation will proceed.

We already know from X by Y v. Z that it doesn’t matter what their grades are, its whether the school district removed the barriers to access their education equitably

[142] Y has said that the learning support provided throughout X’s education has not been enough for X to “reach the same level as his peers or possibly excel”. The District’s obligation is reasonable not perfect accommodation. As I have said above, reasonable accommodation is not necessarily measured by whether a student is meeting or exceeding certain standardized learning goals but rather by whether barriers have been removed to provide meaningful access to education.

As always, I extend much appreciation and thanks to the parents who are navigating this system and bringing these decisions forward.

Putting the pieces together

Accepted human rights complaints

Calling all Human Rights Lawyers

This is the bottleneck that parents are experiencing.

Parents want to hire lawyers for their human rights complaints, and they are struggling to find people. Some people are finding pro bono lawyers, and others aren’t. Some people can afford to pay lawyers and they are still struggling to find people. Some parents are lawyers themselves, but human rights isn’t their area of law.

I know there are legal-aid clinics reading my blog. I also know there are parents who are lawyers reading my blog, considering getting into this area. We need help!!

The need: Parents need lawyers to consult with for summary advice, and/or they need lawyers to take on their cases for human rights complaints. The non-profits that support this work are overwhelmed. They tend to shy away from education cases because they are complex, and they don’t have the capacity to handle these kinds of cases. Because of an overwhelmed legal system, parents are struggling to advocate for failings in the education system.

This is an area that needs expansion.

If there is a law firm that is willing to take this on and expand into this area, the need is great. Even to just offer summary advice. An hour of consultation here and there as they navigate the system can make a world of difference.

Parents all want to know… do I have a human rights complaint on my hands? They need the confirmation and validation. More parents would be filing human rights complaints with this confidence in their case.

If you are a lawyer or you know of someone in this field, please send me an email. I would love to be able to send you a referral.

If you are a parent and you have used a lawyer that you felt was positive, I would really appreciate it if you sent me their contact info. I would love to be able to send them a referral.

In the meantime, for parents looking for summary advice, please contact the BC Human Rights Clinic – Legal Services

Here is a list of disability law clinics and other legal-aid organizations that offer summary advice or lawyer referral services.

When you contact these places, I highly suggest you write out what you want to tell them to best utilize the time that you have with them.

Discrimination test

The test of discrimination is here from the BC Human Rights Tribunal website:

  1. they have a characteristic protected by the Human Rights Code [Code];
  2. they experienced an adverse impact with respect to an area protected by the Code; and
  3. the protected characteristic was a factor in the adverse impact.

You are going to want to be able to explain to them what your child’s protected characteristic is, the harm they experienced, and how the harm is connected to their protected characteristic.

Timelines

Timelines are a great way to explain events. When lawyers present evidence in court, they tend to present the evidence in a chronological order.

Evidence

You may also want to explain what kind of evidence you have. Emails? Photographs? Video? Recordings?

Making the most of your time

I almost think of it as a 30-second elevator speech. People in business need to be able to succinctly give their business pitches. You want to make the most of your time when consulting with a lawyer, and the more organized you are in explaining the situation, the better they will be able to assess your situation, and you will get the most out of your time.

Consultation fees, I am being told, can range from $400 – $750 per hour.

If you are paying for a lawyer, every email you send or phone call you have will be added to your invoice for later. You will want to know how they will be invoicing you for your time with them. Human rights complaint settlements tend not to be high, so it will be important to keep your expenses low. The one great thing about being self-represented through the human rights complaint system is that you don’t need to worry about the school district lawyers playing games with you to drive up your lawyer’s fees.

Pro bono lawyers can sometimes take 2-3 weeks to call you back. Keep calling. Keep emailing people. Patience and persistence will be key.

You may want to go onto YouTube and search up videos on self-representation in Canada. There are a ton of videos on there. All tips and things not to do when representing yourself. Information overload. There are lots of articles stating that approx 50-60% of Canadians are navigating the court system without a lawyer… with self-representation on the rise. Very interesting.

If anyone has anyone specific or a law firm that they think should be on a referral list, please let me know.

More Students are Advocating!

Ministry of Education, I hope you are paying attention to this!!

New article posted April 3rd, 2025

Surrey students plan march to push for B.C. school funding

Surrey school district grappling with $16M shortfall in 2025-26 budget

https://www.cloverdalereporter.com/local-news/surrey-students-plan-march-to-push-for-bc-school-funding-7918382

When adults fail students in policy and legislation, students will be pushed to take things into their own hands.

Good for them!!!

Students were rallying previously in Surrey

There was this article:

Students rally against closure of White Rock learning centre

Supporters of South Surrey White Rock Learning Centre protest ahead of Surrey school board meeting

https://www.surreynowleader.com/local-news/students-rally-against-closure-of-white-rock-learning-centre-7763018

Students have been advocating by filing and speaking out in human rights complaints about the discrimination they have been experiencing in the education system. Here is the blog about that: The Next Generation of Student Advocates

I have started a new page to keep track of the advocacy activities of the students.

I have so many mixed emotions when I see students uprising. It’s a mix of feeling so proud of them and wanting to cheer them on. I also feel so embarrassed and ashamed to be part of the age of adults who are all in the same age bracket as me, who are making these ridiculous decisions and not properly funding schools. Our generation is creating such a mess, and students are being pushed to their limits. They are now forming a march. We are failing them!

I hope I am helping to share their advocacy.

I am sending this blog to the Ministry of Education this weekend. So shameful!

Blog: Budget Time!

Communicating with the School – Friend or Foe?

This can be tricky.

There are certain levels of advocacy. We always tend to start off slow and see how things unfold. Sometimes things resolve organically or with minimal intervention. Other times, things can turn adversarial. Building relationships with people has been an important element to advocating and building community in general. Pulling people in, instead of pushing them away. 

However…. there will be times when major incidents can flip things upside down. Or, enough moderate levels of chronic discrimination make maintaining or building that relationship very difficult. 

If you are reading my blog, you have probably found me through a Google search or Facebook. Chances are, you have found me because things are not going well. You may already be in the process of an external complaint system or are seriously considering it. 

Communication when things get intense in schools is a different world. 

Sometimes, school staff will recognize right away that the subject you want to discuss could potentially place them in hot water. They will call you instead of sending you an email.

Or sometimes it’s the opposite. They will send you a triggering email on purpose. Poking you intentionally. Wanting your elevated response to be documented.   

Not all of their communication will be adversarial. Sometimes they are genuinely looking to resolve the situation and don’t want to escalate things further and so they want to meet with you in person. Sometimes we are so triggered by past negative experiences with school staff that we are automatically launched into defence or attack mode. We end up making the worst assumptions out of fear responses, from very lovely people. And I speak from experience.

On the other hand, we may truly be dealing with strategic “wolves in sheep clothing” type people.  And I also speak from experience. It can be hard to weed through and figure out who wants to help and who is following instructions from the legal team. Friend or foe?

I saw a t-shirt online once and it read “Mr. Rogers didn’t prepare me for the people in my neighbourhood.” I laughed because that resonated!

When navigating the education system, there are rules on the order of who you can communicate with and how you can communicate with them.

Here are some examples of types of communication experiences:

  1. They may tell you are not allowed to communicate with your child’s EA. (Which is true. All communication needs to go through the teacher. Some schools are more flexible about this.)
  2. You need to first talk to your child’s teacher before you contact ______. (They have a strict hierarchy of who you talk to first and how to escalate. They also have internal rules on who the district can talk to and they need to follow an order. Be aware that if you email the district about your child’s principal, that principal will be contacted to get their side of the story, before they contact you.)
  3. They may just ignore your email.
  4. They may call you after you have sent an email instead of responding in writing. 
  5. They may request a meeting.
  6. They may flat out lie to you.
  7. They may gaslight you.
  8. They may minimize the issues.
  9. They may blame your child for not self-advocating.
  10. They may distract you with irrelevant information about other topics.
  11. They may send someone to befriend you to gather information.
  12. They may want to de-escalate this as quickly as possible hoping the issues don’t blow up into bigger ones. (These are the trauma-informed responses. These are the ones we hope for.)

For people who are in independent schools, you need to be extra careful. Many parents sign code of conduct agreements and if you cross the line they can kick out your kid and blame it on you for breaking the contract. Some will even have in their written contract that you file an external complaint, that is reason to kick out your kid.

It’s easier to see some of the games they play in hindsight. It’s harder to recognize this stuff when you are in it and your emotions are high, and possibly feel like you are in survival mode for your child.  It can be hard to trust our own judgement. Sometimes we read into things too deeply thinking we are under attack, when we are not. Sometimes we are, and our gut instincts are spot on.

There is a big difference when you are just advocating internally vs. you are costing the districts thousands of dollars in legal fees or taking up a lot of time of senior administration. It’s just good to keep our eyes wide open and reflect and pay attention to HOW they are communicating. It can be very revealing. It’s not just what they are saying and what they are doing. It’s also what they are NOT saying and what they are NOT doing that can also be revealing. 

Also know, lawyers are involved way earlier than we think they are.

They may tell us that what we are doing is “inappropriate”. They may use silence. All of these are flags that we are onto something and have hit a nerve. I offer you all this blog. 5 rules on how to stay untouchable.

Having someone join you in a meeting to take notes can be very helpful. I have left meetings and wondered what on earth has just happened here. They can spin you in circles. It can be a good thing to have a support person and a witness. You will need to bring someone who isn’t a parent in the school district. Otherwise, they will claim confidentiality reasons that they can not attend.

When you email someone, and if you cc: people, those in the cc: line will not respond. If you want a response from someone, you need to stick them in the TO: line.

A great resource to find out who you need to talk to internally, the hierarchy, is in Chapter 7 of the Inclusion BC, Inclusive Education Manual.

I also recommend that you look on your school district’s website. They will likely have a parent’s code of conduct document, and/or a document on how to resolve conflict. You will need to follow that step by step.

Solution Options:

  1. If they only want to talk on the phone, you can follow up with an email of what was discussed and ask them to clarify if you misunderstood anything.
  2. For dealing with silence I offer you this page.
  3. Some parents have resorted to recording phone conversations. There are laws around recording conversations. You will need to research this and stay up to date on any law changes. If they tell you in a meeting that they don’t want to be recorded, you will not be able to record them. If you are an employee wanting to record conversations at work, you are in a whole other area of law that is specific to employment and I HIGHLY recommend you consult with an employment lawyer before you go down this path.
  4. Bring a note-taker or support person with you to meetings.
  5. If you are making allegations against a staff member that they did something, be aware that they have every right to explain, clarify and defend themselves. They will be included in the resolution process. In all formal working structures that I am aware of, each complaint system wants you to try to resolve the issue with the person first. 
  6. If internal advocacy through the whole internal process (all the way to the top) doesn’t resolve anything, external options may be your only recourse.

For big incidents, parents/guardians are often looking for an apology. Some get it, some don’t. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for one. They are often advised by their lawyers never to admit to anything. Something else I saw online, “I hope you heal from the things no one apologized for”. The need for accountability can drive people through the external complaint systems. Which I don’t think is a bad thing. Filing complaints is a form of advocacy. Our experiences are included in data collection and this can lead to systemic change. School districts need to know they have external eyes on them. Letting them think they are untouchable is dangerous in my eyes.

Communication is the foundation of advocacy.

If this is an area that you need support with, I really encourage you to find an advocacy buddy, support group, request accommodations with the district if this is disability related, and/or connect with other support professionals who can help you navigate. There are non-profits offering this kind of support, but also people who do this kind of work full-time.