Tag: #School

Go Ahead…Piss me off. Good Luck with That.

This blog is about why Speaking Up BC started, why it is still ticking, and why it will ALWAYS be ticking.

100% this website exists because of how my children’s school district and their lawyers have been engaging with me. Why they think their adversarial strategy benefits them, I have no idea. I know they don’t like this website. I actually at one point thought I wanted to just shut everything down and slip away back into my old life. I actually almost deleted Speaking Up BC. And then they did something that ensured that would never happen. That is when I had it confirmed just how dirty this system really is, and for that reason, I am all in. Until my final breath.

When I think about it, they have been funding my advocacy projects and provided me with life experiences that I have been able to turn into knowledge and lived experience to pass along to all of you. Pain into purpose. All of the content of this website is because of them and how they chose to engage with me. Feel free to send them flowers.

If they did the exact opposite of everything they have been doing, I guarantee you, all the complaints I have filed would never have happened. This website would never exist. The HR decisions never would have been. P.A.T.H. would never have been created, and clearly P.A.T.H. needs to exist for a very long time. They have provided me with ample evidence.

Not only do I have decisions, yup 3 decisions, from the BC Human Rights Tribunal, each with its own gems, benefiting parents’ advocacy. (All paid for by the school district, hundreds of thousands of dollars.) But I have learned so much and have become the advocate I am today because of their “training program”. It’s been a world I have been able to learn and study from that I never would have had access to if they decided to be human and resolve things with me, instead of fighting me. They have now become predictable to me, and that is glorious.

I am not the same person I was 5.5 years ago. My emotional regulation skills are now at such a higher level. I have been able to sharpen my skills with all the experience. What they thought would break me, has actually built me. Now I’ll send flowers.

There are parents that are crossing their fingers that the lawyers just keep pissing me off, waiting for more content. More fence testing opportunities.

The birth of this website was at a time when I was pushed to my limits. Each time I think I reach a limit, I find out…actually, I can keep going. And I am growing, and still growing. When all of this started I was an emotional mess. I look back at emails from the beginning, and oh my word. I wonder who is this person who wrote this ridiculousness. Work. Rest. Grow. Repeat.

This website is because I want parents to benefit from everything that I have gone through. I want to give people as much information as possible. I don’t want any parent to feel that lost or desperate for information, not even for 5 min.

This website has grown into quite the beast. I started out having zero people reading my website with a handful of people reading my blogs. But over the years it has been growing. The stats on this website still shock me…and make me giggle. (hee, hee)

My blogs get posted, and depending on the topic, can reach around 1,500 page views of that blog in just 24 hours and the numbers just climb over the next few days. Even on days of no blogging, my stats are high. Over the last 4 years, they are consistently climbing, with almost 100,000 page views. Almost 20,000 thousand people have been accessing this site.

It’s not just parent(s)/guardians contacting me for help. It’s employees, parents advocating in healthcare and community services, and high school STUDENTS asking for help.

So, let me state the obvious. To the school districts and the 4 most commonly used law firms representing the school districts….when you piss off mama bears, and poke them and fight them, these mama bears go searching, and when they do go searching, they find this website and they will find their community. I already know there are parents out there quoting my website content. Save yourselves and your district a lot of taxpayer’s money and stress, and try working with people and not against them. eh?

I had a reporter from CBC in Ontario contact me and she said I am the only parent that she can find in Canada with a website about this kind of education information. I was like…that can’t be true, seriously? And she said yup, the only parent I can find. The sheer volume of blogs I have written creates a lot of search terms that make it easier for people to find me. I don’t know how the algorithms work but there are a TON of people finding me just off of Google searches. I have people all over Canada contacting me.

For parents who want to blog and start sharing their own experiences, whether it be about the medical field or education, any tips and tricks that you learn navigating the system, there is a very good chance you will have an audience who will benefit. I can’t tell you the number of people who have reached out to me and thanked me for my website.

For the people who are interested in elevating their advocacy to a wider audience…

You can do this too! I really encourage people in other provinces to start this kind of information that is specific to your own provincial systems. We are all dealing with similar things and have similar complaint avenues, but they aren’t exactly the same. In Ontario, the Teacher’s College actually gives parents the teacher’s submissions and they have a specific department for the human rights tribunal for education matters.

Websites can cost a couple hundred a year to maintain. You can create them through WordPress. I had zero training and just figured things out as I went along. You can YouTube on how to create websites. Speaking Up BC is certainly not a fancy design. It’s literally just a template on WordPress.

If you start up a website, send me your link. I’ll start up a parent website page with everyone’s site. We can be like a big spiderweb and all link together.

I just caution people to be very thoughtful about what they put on their website and to not name anyone, and to be aware of defamation. Know the difference between allegations (accusations before proven in court/tribunal) vs. facts proven in court/tribunal. But all of those things that you learn along the way, that lived experience. That is gold! Capture that!

You can also start up a YouTube channel for free! Social media pages! Facebook pages/groups!

I have found in the last 5.5 years I have bounced all over the place in terms of my emotions, from times of forgiveness and healing, to dipping back into anger and sheer disappointment in the system and with the people who are choosing to follow along and treat parents in this way.

I remember when I first started the human rights tribunal process their response to the complaint had me running on anger. I was determined to do a hearing but also wondered how I was going to have it in me to pull that off. The good thing about the tribunal process is that it takes years to get to a hearing. You won’t be the same person in those years. You will have opportunities to sharpen your skills. To grow and learn. Not only mentally with learning things but emotionally as a person.

During my process, there have been times when I have benefited from reaching out to counselling services to help emotionally manage everything. Rhodes College has students from their counselling program that you can access Affordable Counselling which was around $25 per hour or even less, when I accessed it years ago.

I now work in a profession where I navigate the human rights tribunal as my career and help people with their human rights issues, full-time. I love it!

I think a big part of my success in navigating these systems has been because I am completely willing to fall flat on my face and push into unknown territory. I just don’t care if I fail. There are always gems of goodness in “failure”. Is it ever really a failure? It’s just a step really. Part of the process of getting really good at something.

So, you know what? Go ahead…piss me off. Good luck with that.

It’s all just gas in my gas tank.

This website will be available forever. I even joked with my husband that I want it put in my will that our children are required to pay for the domain name to keep this going. HA!

One thing I learned through this process is to trust myself. I have more in me than I even realized. I can do hard things. I can learn. I can grow.

I am not the only one.

School districts and their lawyers will always underestimate parent(s)/guardians. We don’t need to underestimate ourselves.

There are lots of us who are navigating these systems and they are turning into fine-tuned advocacy machines. Some are writing books, starting businesses, starting non-profit organizations (BCEdAccess, Dyslexia BC, InspireFASD, ADHD Society) leading DPACs, advocating in the media, and making career changes to enter the education system.

So, you know what? Go ahead… piss us off! Good luck with that.

Evidence of Harm. Effective Advocacy in Education.

Why is collecting evidence of harm so important?

Part of an effective way to advocate for your child is going to be your ability to communicate with the school.

The information that you tell them is going to impact that effectiveness and also trigger certain human rights obligations.

The Duty to Accommodate is established under section 8 of the Human Rights Code of BC.

In order for you to convince the tribunal that your child has experienced discrimination, the first part of the test will be to prove the 3-part discrimination test.

This is from the website of the BC Human Rights Tribunal

Test for Discrimination

“Moore v. BC (Education), 2012 SCC 61. To prove discrimination, a complainant has to prove that:

  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.

Once a complainant proves these three things, the respondent can defend itself by proving its conduct was justified. If the respondent proves its conduct was justified, then there is no discrimination. If the respondent’s conduct is not justified, discrimination will be found to occur (para. 33).”

In the context of disability, you will need to prove that they have a physical/mental disability that the school was aware of, that they experienced harm, and that this harm was connected to their disability.

We already have it written in a decision that not all negative experiences are discrimination. Their disability must be a FACTOR in the conduct.

X by Y v. Board of Education of School District No. Z, 2024 BCHRT 72
110] ….I accept that these incidents which X relayed to Y were upsetting to X. I appreciate that the interactions may have fed into X’s general feelings of unease at school, but the fact alone that these events may have happened is not enough, in itself, to establish that X’s disability factored into them. Not all negative experiences are discrimination. Even accepting that these incidents occurred, I did not hear evidence that could establish, on a balance of probabilities, that X’s disability was a factor in the conduct of the adults involved in these interactions.

So….. what does this mean as parents?

We need to document the harm.

Here is my blog Documenting the Harm specifically on how to do that.

We need to be able to communicate to the school and connect the dots for them, that what they are doing is creating harm.

As parents, we need to communicate to the school that our child is struggling and this struggle is connected to their disability. This will trigger MEANINGFUL INQUIRY. They must investigate and come up with solutions to try and decrease the impact of harm.

Meaningful Inquiry

[99]           Next, in B v. School District, 2019 BCHRT 170, the evidence supported that the school district provided the child with the recommended supports and accommodations. The Tribunal found that it was “only with hindsight” that it was possible to say that the child could have benefited from more support: para. 81. It dismissed the complaint in part because there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the school district reasonably ought to have known that the child required more: para. 98. In contrast here, I have found that the District had sufficient information to trigger some kind of inquiry or response beyond asking the Student how she was doing and, assuming the counsellor did this, advising of available supports.

[100]      In short, I agree with the District that the Parent and Student were obliged to bring forward information relating to accommodation. The Parent did that, when she communicated that the Student had anxiety and trichotillomania and that school was taking a significant toll on her physical and mental health. That information should have been enough to prompt a meaningful inquiry by the school to identify what was triggering the Student’s symptoms and what supports or accommodations may be appropriate to ensure she was able to meaningfully and equitably access her education. The failure to take that step was, in my view, not reasonable. As a result, the disability-related impacts on the Student, arising from conditions in her Language 10 class between April 24 and June 27, 2019, have not been justified and violate s. 8 of the Human Rights Code.

We don’t need to necessarily say overtly, that we are considering filing a human rights complaint. We can communicate in a way that shows them we are taking these issues seriously and one way of doing that is to provide them with evidence of the harm.

It may be through pictures of what has happened or video, but it can also just simply be statements the child has made at home about school or drawings they have done or things they have written down. Feel free to quote your child. Emailing this to the school does create an evidence trail so that if things are not resolved and you do decide to file a human rights complaint, all of these emails will form part of your document disclosure and you can bring them to your settlement meeting.

The respondents (the lawyers defending the school district) are going to make arguments that the school’s actions are justified and that reasonable accommodations were provided.

However, if your child is still experiencing harm, how can they argue that reasonable accommodations were provided? That’s why we need evidence of the harm.

The school district also has the final decision-making power with your child’s education. Parents have a duty to facilitate. Even if we don’t agree with their decision we must not become a barrier to their decision or if in the future we file a human rights complaint, it may be dismissed. Here is the case that created the duty to facilitate.

A and B obo Infant A v. School District C (No. 5), 2018 BCHRT 25

[248]      The School District is not the only party with obligations in the accommodation process. Rather, the parents were obliged, as the Child’s representatives, to work towards facilitating an appropriate accommodation: Central Okanagan School District No. 23 v. Renaud, 1992 CanLII 81 (SCC), [1992] 2 SCR 970. If the School District initiated a reasonable proposal that would, if implemented, accommodate the Child, then the Parents were obliged to facilitate that proposal. Failure to do so is fatal to their complaint of discrimination.

So, if their decision is creating harm, we are going to need evidence of that to show that what they decided isn’t working.

I know this piece of collecting evidence can be really hard for parents. They don’t feel that they “should” have to do this. They feel that this is being too aggressive and they don’t want to upset people at their child’s school. I get it. No one wants to feel that they are in an adversarial relationship with their child’s school. Jumping the shark can be really hard.

When you advocate you can still be pleasantly persistent and communication doesn’t need to be adversarial. However, I haven’t known of any effective advocacy when parents put being viewed as “nice” as their priority, over effective communication.

Here is the Inclusive Education Manual created by Incluison BC for helpful information on how to communicate with your child’s school. Here is Family Support Institute’s Toolkit Resources on education advocacy. And I would also just want to add, that if things get intense…which sometimes they do. Please read my blog on 5 Rules on How to be Untouchable

Document

Communicate

Repeat

And if that doesn’t work….

You have external complaint systems

External Resolution Options in Education

Welcome to a New School Year

Parents tend to be excited that the school year is starting. Commercials poke fun at the idea of tired parents excited to send their kids back to school. Do we all remember that Staples commercial with the Christmas music playing “the most wonderful time of the year”, parents beaming, collecting school supplies? I do.

Preparing for another school year, for parents of kids with disabilities is different. Mixed emotions. Fear is one of them. We know we may be facing the verbal minefield of navigating conversations with district administration and processing the non-death loss over and over again when we feel that school hasn’t turned out the way we thought it would.

We have had to make peace and accept we have become people, we never thought we would be, all in the name of advocating for our children, as we felt pushed to “jump the shark”.

We try to “get ready” mentally…emotionally, for the upcoming year. Always wondering when the next issue or incident is going to appear.

The education system is not designed to support inclusion. All those involved are set up to fail. It’s a hit-and-miss situation. Some kids experience it, and some don’t. For the teachers who are in the fight, standing along side of us, but are muzzled by the system to not speak out. We know you are there. We feel you.

These are the cards we have been dealt.

So what do we do with it?

Human rights advocacy is our strongest form of advocacy. It has the strongest teeth. The parents who have navigated through the system have made personal sacrifices to bring these decisions to fruition.

By using case law, hopefully, a parent(s)/guardian will not need to enter the system to begin with.

The Human Rights Code and the Duty to Accommodate is both our shield and our sword. Understanding the school’s role and responsibilities and our role and responsibilities is key.

Duty to Accommodate
Understanding Exclusion

School are required to remove barriers and continually monitor students and adapt. Never giving up. Always trying to remove the barriers. They need to investigate what those barriers are, if we tell them our child is struggling.

We have some hope on the horizon.

The BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner has started a campaign called Rights in focus: Lived realities in BC

Education inequalities is highlighted as the #2 issue. To read more about the education section you can read the report. Raising these issues and making them public will not mean that our issues will go away. Changes in human systems are painfully slow. And while we wait….harm is being done. But this is what is required to create social change. We need to do the slow consistent work of changing hearts and minds. And while we do this heavy lifting, we are weathered by it. But every little step we make and every little advancement all adds up. The little things do matter. They matter immensely. The little things are actually what leads to change. All of us. Lifting at once.

There are clearly financial costs to human rights complaints in education in BC. There are also financial costs that go beyond just the lawyer’s fees and settlements for society at large. There are social, societal and human costs too. Raising awareness of these issues is step one. I am very excited that these inequity issues are being highlighted by the Commissoner’s Office.

We need to get loud.

Doing this by ourselves is exhausting. This is why having a support system, network, and having organizations elevate our voices is exactly what we need.

To all of the fellow parents out there, getting ready for another school system….I feel like we need a group hug.

“May the odds be ever in your favor” – The Hunger Games.

Self-Advocacy and Victim Blaming in Education

Certain elements of self-advocacy need to be in place.

1. The person on some level needs to be accepting of their disability AND be willing to talk about it.

2. They have to be able to identify when they need help.

3. They need to identify what they need help with and have the language to express it.

4. They need a trusted adult who has proved their willingness to listen to them over time.

5. The child needs to feel heard.

6. The child needs to feel that this trusted adult will believe them when they say they need help.

7. This needs to be repeated enough times and be predictable enough for the self-advocate to feel comfortable and safe to advocate for their needs.

Often school staff will say…..

Well _____________ happened, but if XXXX advocated for himself, this wouldn’t have happened.

That is BULLSHIT.

Children since they enter school are socialized to believe they MUST follow authority or something really bad is going to happen. They think they will be disappointing all the adults in their lives, and kids deep down just want to make their loved ones love them.

All they want to do is to make the adults (especially their parents but also their teachers) in their lives happy so that they will feel worthy and good about themselves. We need to look at their situation through the lens of a child.

There is so much systemic ableism, that people don’t want to acknowledge it. If they do, they are now responsible for changing it.

Learning self-advocacy can take a lifetime. Adults have a hard time advocating. It’s stressful and anxiety-producing for all of us. We need to have realistic expectations for our children. Especially when they are navigating an oppressive system, based on hierarchy, and control. They live in this environment 5 days a week, we don’t.

We have a human rights decision on our side.

It’s easy for schools to make us think our kids share responsibility or are responsible for all of it.

Let’s keep in mind….

Self-advocacy expectations have been defined by the BC Human Rights Tribunal. In Student by Parent v. School District BCHRT 237.

[90]           Generally, it is the obligation of the person seeking accommodation to bring forward the relevant facts: Central Okanagan School District No. 23 v. Renaud, 1992 CanLII 81 (SCC), [1992] 2 SCR 970. This can be challenging for children, and especially challenging for children with invisible disabilities. I agree with the Parent that children who require accommodation in their school are in a different situation than adults seeking accommodation. Though they have a role to play in the process, that role will be age and ability-specific, and the burden cannot be on a child to identify and bring forward the facts necessary for their accommodation.

Communication Expectations in Education Defined by BC Government

Parents often wonder….

  • how much communication is too little?
  • Too much?
  • Am I allowed to…?
  • What can I expect?

Some parents have lots of communication with their children’s teachers and other parents are struggling not knowing any information or too little to even advocate for their children.

If you hit a brick wall or if you are not getting the information you need, having a policy from the government on communication expectations can be the key you need to get you through the door.

As of July 1st, 2023 this is the Reporting Policy from the BC Government.

Here are just a few clips from the policy statement. To read the full document click here.

Policy Statement

“Meaningful and flexible communication of student learning across British Columbia’s K-12 school system ensures parents/guardians and students are informed about student learning.“

“All learners benefit from individualized descriptive feedback and personal involvement in the assessment process.“

“Communication of student learning is ongoing throughout the year. This Policy is designed to ensure school districts have the freedom and flexibility to communicate about student learning in a way that best meets the needs of students; this includes communication with students and parents/guardians that is inclusive, accessible, and culturally responsive.” 

“Teachers provide timely feedback to parents/guardians and/or students that is responsive to student needs. The communication between home and school can take many forms.” 

Rationale

“Meaningful and flexible communication of student learning in clear and accessible language enables parents/guardians, students, teachers, and administrators to proactively work together to enhance student learning. This Policy ensures the student and parents/guardians are partners in the dialogue about the student’s learning and the best ways to support and further learning. Students benefit when they and their parents/guardians are made aware of their strengths and areas of needed growth and are provided support early.”