School Districts have the authority to send parents a letter under Section 177 of the School Act that bans parents from entering school property. Sometimes this is essential to keep staff and children safe from parents who are disruptive and are refusing to leave school property. Sometimes this power can be misused and abused. Regardless, here is some information below about the process. And most importantly, the school district should be informing you about an appeals process.
In the School Act:
Division 6 — Offences
Maintenance of order
177 (1)A person must not disturb or interrupt the proceedings of a school or an official school function.
(2)A person who is directed to leave the land or premises of a school by a principal, vice principal, director of instruction or a person authorized by the board to make that direction
(a)must immediately leave the land and premises, and
(b)must not enter on the land and premises again except with prior approval from the principal, vice principal, director of instruction or a person who is authorized by the board to give that approval.
(3)A person who contravenes subsection (1) or (2) commits an offence.
(4)A principal, vice principal or director of instruction of a school or a person authorized by the board may, in order to restore order on school premises, require adequate assistance from a peace officer.
I have heard from many parents they are trapped as there isn’t an appeals process.
But there is!!! The school district just isn’t telling you.
Provincial Guidelines
Here are the provincial guidelines regarding a Section 177 that includes the ability to appeal.
Here is an Ombudsperson BC Decision that involves what the district needs to do to communicate the appeals process in order for it to be fair and they posted this on their website. See link below.
School’s out
School District 57 (Prince George)
The complaint: The Jones family received a letter from School District 57 (Prince George) stating that the parents could not go to their child’s school. The school district said the parents were behaving aggressively and refused to leave the grounds when asked.
The Joneses were unable to respond to the information in the letter because they were not aware they could appeal the district’s decision. The letter from the school failed to provide information about how to appeal its decision nor was this information publicly available. Concerned that the decision was unfair and not knowing what they could do, they reached out to us for help.
What we did: Under the School Act, districts can exclude people from school property. But those decisions must be fair. We investigated to see if the district had acted fairly in the way it informed the Joneses that they were not allowed to go to their child’s school.
Our investigation found that School District 57 did not provide the Joneses with information about how to appeal the decision or any deadlines that applied. In addition, the information about the exclusion process was not publicly available.
How we helped: The district contacted the Joneses and acknowledged that its staff made an error when it did not tell them how to appeal its decision.
The district also changed its process to make it more fair by:
- making policy and appeal processes publicly available by posting them on its website
- updating its template letters to include information about how to make an appeal
Why it matters: For a decision to be fair, individuals like the Joneses must be provided with information about how the decision was made and information about how to request an appeal.