Before becoming executive director of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, Tracy Humphreys spent years advocating for an investigation into the exclusion of kids with disabilities from the B.C. public school system.
On Tuesday, Jan. 14, the B.C. Office of the Ombudsperson finally answered that call when it announced it was investigating reports of students being excluded from public schools for their “disruptive or unsafe behaviour” or because schools lack the resources needed to support their learning.
“Our office has received complaints from across the province about children, including those with disabilities, being excluded from school with little or no instruction,” said B.C. Ombudsperson Jay Chalke in a Jan. 14 press release.
“We will examine the extent to which K-12 students are being excluded from schools across the province and whether those exclusions are fair. We will assess the role of the Ministry of Education and Child Care and school districts in these exclusions.”
The B.C. ombudsperson has the authority to investigate decisions, procedures and acts done or omitted by a public authority against a complainant.
Its resulting investigation reports may include recommendations for that authority to follow going forward, but the ombudsperson doesn’t have the power to compel the authority to implement them.
According to the office’s 2023-24 annual report, school districts received 104 complaints. By comparison, the Ministry of Children and Family Development received the highest number of complaints at 401.
“Children have limited options to address unfairness in their education and school environments,” said Chalke, whose office is collecting feedback from families via a confidential questionnaire.
“By examining this issue we can make recommendations to support the ministry and school districts in meeting their inclusive education commitments and obligations to all students.”
In an emailed statement provided to The Tyee, Education Minister Lisa Beare welcomed the investigation and pledged to work closely with the ombudsperson.
“Our government has more than doubled funding to school districts for inclusive supports and services since 2017, but I know barriers remain,” said Beare, who is a former school trustee.
“My ministry and I will continue to work closely with all 60 school districts, advocates, our education partners and partner ministries — such as the Ministries of Health and Children and Family Development — to identify gaps, improve supports for students with disabilities or diverse abilities, and make our schools more inclusive for everyone now and in the future.”
Perpetuating family poverty
Before becoming the executive director of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, Humphreys was executive director of BCEd Access, a grassroots, parent-led organization that advocates for equitable education access for kids with disabilities.
Since 2018, BCEd Access has released six Exclusion Tracker reports based on surveys filled out by parents of students with disabilities in B.C. They are currently collecting online survey responses from parents for the 2024-25 school year report.
The most recent report from the 2022-23 school year found 70 students had been excluded from B.C. schools for a combined 5,973 days. The majority of kids excluded from school were in kindergarten and Grade 1, and a quarter of the exclusion periods reported were over four months long.
This was an increase from the 2021-22 report, where less than 20 per cent of exclusions lasted over four months.
Humphreys said that many kids who are excluded do not yet have diagnoses — they are waiting for the psychological assessments necessary to receive a learning disability or neurodivergence diagnosis.
Neurodivergent students, including those with ADHD and autism, often require additional learning supports that schools aren’t providing without that diagnosis.
And even with a diagnosis, Humphreys added, schools and school districts often lack the resources — despite the Education Ministry’s assertions of increased spending in this area — to provide these supports.
“It’s very complex, but I do think it has to do with funding as much as anything,” she said, adding the issue of funding insufficient to meet the costs of support dates back to the stripping of teachers’ contracts by the then-BC Liberal government in 2001-02.
“And then also some of those other factors like having standards of practice for education assistants, so that we know the training is consistent across the board.”
Karla Verschoor, executive director of Inclusion BC, says the disability advocacy organization has been seeing an increase in the severity of complaints from parents of students with disabilities, as well as school administrators and teachers themselves, about school exclusion in recent years.
“Last year alone we supported 600 families, and we see that number on the rise. In the last three months we supported 220 families,” she said.
The negative impact of school exclusions on students and families is multifold and can have lifelong consequences, Verschoor said. Parents who can’t rely on having school or before- or after-school care for their kids often sacrifice work to care for them.
“It’s perpetuating family poverty,” she said, adding one in five children with disabilities in B.C. lives in poverty.
For the kids, being excluded from school sends the message that they lack academic potential.
“If you work with adults with disabilities, they’ll tell you those stories — how impactful and harmful it was,” Verschoor said.
“People didn’t believe in their ability to learn and contribute, and for me, that is what’s at stake.”
Even if the ombudsperson lacks the power to enforce changes in this area, both Humphreys and Verschoor agreed that the investigation is a good first step towards change.
“I don’t think that we have a provincial strategy for true implementation of inclusive education,” Verschoor said.
“It will be the responsibility of families, advocacy organizations and school districts to hold the government to account at all levels for those recommendations.”
Read more: Rights + Justice, Education
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