Month: June 2025

How do we Heal?

I have been asked questions by a few parents that all boil down to the same thing.

  1. How do we heal?
  2. How do we move through this?
  3. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

I am not quite sure I am the best person to be answering these questions because I will be transparent, I am struggling with these issues as we speak.

There are a few things I do know.

  1. How do we heal?

I have a degree in criminology. Victims report over and over again that when a sentence is given to a person by a judge who harmed them or their family members, it creates closure, but it never heals them. The healing part now rests in the hands of those who have been harmed. The victim needs to figure out how to heal without the involvement of their abuser.

The question is then, how do we heal from things no one is ever going to apologize for?

Schools never apologize. Ever. They have all clearly been given the same instructions. No matter how severe the harm, they will not apologize. They will never admit liability. They know we could be recording. They won’t do it. They enter the plea: not guilty. If we are waiting for an apology and our healing is dependent on that in order to move forward, we are in trouble.

Healing is also not linear. I am really not in a place to give tips on healing. It is a messy process. One I think, is a worthy goal to work on. I don’t want to be angry for the rest of my life. I want to let this shit go. I hope that we all heal, as individuals and as a community. It’s hard to heal when you are still in it.

Healing is so individualized, but worthy of the effort in figuring out what you need to do to move on with peace.

2. How do we move through this?

While you are in the school system, it can be a state of survival mode. After having two kids graduate from the public school setting. Here are my suggestions.

a. You absolutely need to find yourself some kind of support system. A support group, a friend, a Facebook group…. something. Someone who is experiencing something similar to you. We need our people like we need air. We can experience and tolerate and move through a lot of shit, as long as we KNOW we aren’t alone. It’s when we feel separated from the pack, alone and unprotected, that we aren’t going to make it. Community care is essential.

b. Self-care like nobody’s business. This is going to look different for every person. If you need a bath every night before bed to survive, take it. If you need to ask for help from a neighbour so you can go for a walk once a week, ask for help. I am one who writes and needs to get everything out of me on paper. I journal a lot. We need to regulate our bodies. If we don’t prioritize our own regulation, no one else is going to do that. Don’t put your sex life on the back burner. Our bodies and brains need it. Watch comedies. Laughing is so important. Find relaxing activities to do within the limitations and opportunities in your own life. Find healthy things to increase your dopamine levels, naturally.

c. For me, I run on anger. It’s gas in my gas tank. Take your emotions and make them work for you. Figuring out how to do this is worth the effort and how people do this, will be dependent on how you process things.

d. There are counselling programs that offer therapy that is either free or very low cost. These can be great!

3. Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

I don’t know. I can’t guarantee you that it will only get easier from here on out.

But what I can tell you is that I truly believe there is ALWAYS hope.

All we need is a little bit of hope. I have hope in people. There ARE really good people in this world. There is goodness in us. You never know what is around the corner.

One of the quotes that I love from Judith Heuman, a disability activist, is:

“Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over the years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.”

Who would have ever guessed that the Ombudsperson BC would do an exclusion investigation??? Didn’t see that one coming!

When I was in university in my early twenties, my most favourite teacher of all time ended her class with giving everyone a mustard seed in a bag. I didn’t realize that it’s connected to a religious verse. But the point of this message was, that as long as you have hope as small as a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for you. Mustard seeds are very tiny. I can tell you that I still have that mustard seed over 25 years later in my wallet. I have always carried it with me.

She was a very special teacher. I almost dropped out, and she convinced me to stay. So, yeah. This mustard seed that she handed out to the class has stayed with me for 25 years. I just need a bit of hope. That’s it. It has served me well.

I have a couple favourite quotes.

“When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen:

There will be something solid for you to stand upon, or, you will be taught to fly.”

― Patrick Overton, 

My other poem that I love, I found on a locker door of the EA I was replacing. I was an on-call EA when I was in university. The ride on the metro one morning to work was when I really started thinking about dropping out. I spoke to my teacher the next day.

The poem I found on the EA’s locker I was replacing that morning was this.

“Risks

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
― Leo F. Buscaglia

To me, in order to have hope, we have to weed through unknown territory. Never knowing how things are going to work out. We need hope. We need to risk moving forward without knowing the end results.

Never lose hope.

I find reading documentary books or reading about history to remind me to always hope. There have been some incredible people who have done incredible things, against all odds. Whatever you have to do to keep the hope alive, it’s worth it. Reading about disability history to me, feeds me. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Oh Education Case Law…

I have something exciting to share. I will be picking up my degree this week from SFU. I decided not to go to the graduation ceremony. Not my jam. Picking up my degree will finalize my interactions with SFU. I am letting that sink in. It’s been quite a journey.

I am remembering when I first started school in fall of 2021. My first class was a law foundations class. I had a fabulous teacher.

I have a visual reminder of that first class. The lecture hall was huge. I would guess at least 250 students??? She asked the class to raise their hand for those who took grade 12 law. Everyone did but me. At that point, I had never taken a class about law in my life. I knew zilch. 95% of the students had laptops. I had a pen and paper notebook. They were all young adults. I was the only …. …cough…mature student in the room. As the room is buzzing with the sounds of 250 Gen Z overachieving students typing on their laptops, I felt like I was taking out my feather quill and dipping it in my inkwell.

For our first assignment, she wanted us to add a creative piece on our topic. How cool is that? So along with the written assignment, I wrote a poem on education case law.

Here it is.

Case Law

Schools are places of learning
They mold, inspire and teach
But much to my surprise
Educational law is out of reach

As parents you have ideas
How your child’s education will go
Case law doesn’t float through your head
Until you have school conflict woes

As I sat consulting with a lawyer
He told me my case wouldn’t stick
There is no case law to support it
I thought he was just being a dick

I searched through all the case law
And much to my surprise
He was right about my case
I was hoping it was a bunch of lies.

Without educational case law
The people in charge are free
To do whatever the fuck they want
Consequences, they never see

Oh, education case law
It was not meant to be
I guess I have nothing left to do
But get drunk on spiked herbal tea.

The End.

She liked my poem. And I do have to say…it is true, there wasn’t case law similar to what my child had experienced. So, I decided to take the district to a hearing and create my own.

Thanks SFU for being part of the journey and transformation!

New HR Decision… and it’s LOADED

ooohhhh gather around for this one!

Lots of interesting learnings in this decision.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the parent who brought this decision forward.

It was a win for them personally and a win for us for this analysis.

Here we go. This is an exclusion case & Indigenous rights.

Parent obo Student v. BC Ministry of Education and another, 2025 BCHRT 112

There is a lot in here, so I am going to list the important parts that I see.

  1. Ministerial order analysis
  2. Section 11 appeal was dismissed, HR complaint continues
  3. Timeliness application
  4. Ministry of Education dismissed

Respondents Defence Strategy

[10] The School District says that in April 2019, it decided to place the Student on a partial day program pursuant to the Ministry’s Special Needs Students Order, M150/89 [ Ministerial Order ], which states:……

(This policy is used as the school district’s defence to the exclusion in this case.)

[12] In or around 2019, the Student was diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder-Combined [ ADHD-C ], anxiety, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder [ ODD ].

[13] The School District says the Ministerial Order clearly applied in the Student’s circumstances. It says that shortly after the Student started kindergarten, her teacher raised concerns regarding some of the Student’s behaviours related to self-regulation and ability to follow expectations in the classroom, which indicated a need for extra support. The School District says these behaviours escalated during the period of January to March 2019, and included task avoidance, touching others, eloping from the classroom, disrupting the class environment, being unable to follow simple adult directions, and running through the school. In response, the School District says it began implementing more interventions and support for the Student. However, despite these additional supports, the School District says the Student’s behaviour continued to escalate to the point that neither her educational needs, nor those of her classmates, were being met.

The parent made a section 11 appeal

18] The parties agree that the Parent went through the following steps of the appeal procedure:

a. Step 1: appeal to the school principal who upheld the decision to place the Student on a partial day program.

b. Step 2: appeal to the Assistant Superintendent, Learning Services for the School District, who upheld the school principal’s decision.

c. Step 3: appeal to the Superintendent of Schools, who upheld the Assistant Superintendent’s decision.

d. Step 4: appeal to the Board of Trustees for the School District. The Board issued its decision on November 28, 2019, stating that they did not deem it appropriate to require that the Student be immediately returned to full-time attendance at school.

This is SUPER important – take a look at the reason for the appeal not being upheld

[20] The Superintendent of Appeals summarily dismissed the appeal concerning s. 2(2)(f), and an adjudicator rendered a decision dismissing the appeal under s. 2(2)(b) finding that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the appeal because the Student had not been suspended from school [ Ministry Appeal Decision ].

Because the student hadn’t been suspended!!

They do this a lot!

This is VERY important learning for us.

Ministry of Education – Dismissed

So the parent filed against the Ministry of Education as well. They were dismissed from the case. No surprises here. We have seen this over and over.

[31] The Ministry says there has been a clear legislative choice, as set out in the School Act , to divide the roles and responsibilities for K-12 education in BC between the Ministry and the School District. The services the complaint claims the Ministry ought to have provided have not been delineated as within the scope of the Ministry’s jurisdiction and/or authority and would involve an inappropriate intrusion into the role and responsibilities of the School District.

[32] Further, the Ministry says there is no evidence that it had any involvement in the decisions or actions related to the Student’s educational program. The Ministry provides funding and oversight at a high level with respect to K-12 education.

Ministerial Order does not excuse them from human rights process

Now this is SUPER INTERESTING!

[38] The School District argues that the allegations in the complaint fall outside the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. Specifically, the School District says the complainant is improperly attempting to challenge the validity if the Ministerial Order through the Tribunal’s process. The School District notes that one of the remedies sought in the complaint is “changes made to the School Act to protect children who have special needs,” which is beyond the Tribunal’s authority. The School District says it has the legal authority to put students on a partial day program pursuant to the Ministerial Order, under section 75 and 168(2)(t) of the School Act . In this case, the School District says that the Student demonstrated behaviour which met the criteria for a partial day program as set out in the Ministerial Order.

[39] I agree with the School District that the Tribunal does not have the authority to overturn the Ministerial Order or to find the Ministerial Order itself invalid. Similarly, the Tribunal cannot order that changes be made to the School Act . However, I am not persuaded that the allegations in the current complaint are outside of the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.

See what I mean by the respondents will always have an argument.

The stuff they come up with is fascinating.

I gotta hand it to them, they are creative.

The tribunal’s response was this:

[40] Although reforms to the School Act are raised in the complaint as a potential remedy, I read the allegations as encompassing concerns about the manner in which the Ministerial Orders were applied in these circumstances, and the impact on the Student as an Indigenous child with disabilities, rather than the validity of the Ministerial Orders themselves. This is not a complaint challenging the non-discretionary application of legislative criteria, for example. The determination of the “educational needs” of a student with special needs or other students, as well as the appropriate alternative programming for a child with special needs, per the Ministerial Order, are discretionary decisions made by teachers or other School District personnel. These decisions, if influenced by the protected characteristics of an affected student, are within the Tribunal’s jurisdiction to review.

[43] I do not agree with the School District’s characterization of this issue as one of jurisdiction. Rather, it is part of the human rights analysis the Tribunal must undertake in any case and would more appropriately be raised under s.27(1)(b) or (c) of the Code . Nevertheless, I consider whether the allegations against the School District raise an arguable contravention of the Code under s. 27(1)(g) analysis below.

[44] Accordingly, I deny the School District’s application under s. 27(1)(a) of the Code .

Woohoo!

Now, another benefit of this decision is that the respondents know that this argument wont fly with the tribunal. So, this case helps to whittle down their arguments. That is very good.

AND if this wasn’t interesting enough, we even get a timeliness application.

Timeliness Application

[50] I am satisfied in the current circumstances that the allegations form a continuing contravention, and the most recent act of alleged discrimination occurred within one year of the filing of the complaint. I am further satisfied that the allegations pass the “arguable contravention test.”

What is a continuing convention of the code?

[47] A complaint is filed in time if the last allegation of discrimination happened within one year, and older allegations are part of a “continuing contravention”: Code , s. 22(2); School District v. Parent obo the Child , 2018 BCCA 136  at para. 68  . A continuing contravention is “a succession or repetition of separate acts of discrimination of the same character” that could be considered separate contraventions of the Code , and “not merely one act of discrimination which may have continuing effects or consequences”: Chen v. Surrey (City), 2015 BCCA 57 at para. 23  ; School District at para. 50  .

Here are some important allegations that give us a peek into what the parent was dealing with. Always know with these decisions, we aren’t getting the full picture. Decisions are written up to only include the information that is needed for the decision. There is ALWAYS more to the story.

a. February 1, 2019: The Student was put on partial days of school and was not allowed to participate in school activities or be in attendance with her peers;

b. March 1, 2019: The previous vice principal said: “it just gets to a point in the day where we just don’t want to deal with [the Student] anymore”;

c. April 1, 2019: The Parent was called to the school to pick up the Student because “she was having trauma triggered behaviours and several school staff including the principal, vice principal, and EAs had her cornered in the classroom and she was scared, trapped, and in distress;

d. June 1, 2019: The principal said to the Parent: “have you thought about transferring her to a different school?”;

e. June 1, 2019: The Student was separated from her class and was not allowed to be in a classroom with other children;

f. August 1, 2019: The previous Assistant Superintendent said school staff do not want to work with the Student because she is a “dirty girl”;

g. September 1, 2019: “Step 1” meeting with the principal to appeal the decision not to allow the Student in school full time – denied;

h. September 1, 2019: “Step 2” meeting with the Assistant Superintendent to appeal the decision not to allow the Student in school full time – denied;

i. November 1, 2019: “Step 3” meeting with Superintendent of Schools to appeal the decision not to allow the Student in school full time – denied;

j. November 26, 2019: “Step 4” meeting with Board of Trustees to appeal the decision not to allow the Student in school full time – denied.

In conclusion – public interest too!

[66] For these reasons, I find that the complaint is timely. Had I reached a different conclusion, I would have still found that the public interest favours accepting this complaint. The education system has been identified as a common area of human rights concern for Indigenous children: BC Human Rights Tribunal, (2020) “Expanding Our Vision: Cultural Equality and Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights” at p. 27; Ontario Human Rights Commission, (2018) “To dream together: Indigenous peoples and human rights dialogue report” at p. 40. Courts and Tribunals have taken notice that Indigenous women and girls have been, and continue to be, particularly subject to hurtful biases, stereotypes and assumptions, including that they are “unintelligent” or “people of low or bad character not deserving of the same respect, humanity and dignity as others”: R. v Zakuti , 2021 BCSC 2253 at para. 25; Lindsay v. Toronto District School Board , 2020 HRTO 496 at para. 23. Here, the Student as an Indigenous girl who has been denied full access to the public education system, requires that this complaint be situated in its full socio-historical context. The Code ’s purpose of identifying and eliminating persistent patterns of inequality associated with discrimination protected by the Code is served by this complaint being heard at a hearing on the merits: s. 3(d).

And here is this beautiful statement

Dismissal denied – Complaint Proceeding

[68] I deny the application to dismiss the complaint against the School District. These allegations will proceed to a hearing.

I really encourage you to read the case in full. There are a lot of interesting details in there.

Due to the parent’s persistence in bringing this case forward, we have some very interesting legal analysis that are advancing the human rights code. This decision is now an advocacy tool and we are learning about what we need to do.  The piece about appeals being denied around suspensions is very interesting to have this documented.

It would be interesting to see a section 11 appeal done if the school refuses to log it as a suspension. Topics to discuss amongst education advocates, the importance of exclusion being labelled a suspension.

A big thank you to this parent’s advocacy.

“If not you, then who?”

I was at a kids’ baseball game, they were around grade 8 & 9. The ball went soaring high up in the air, into right field. The kid just stood there and didn’t move. The ball landed a few feet away.

The coach yells out, “If not you… then who?”

I am not writing this to comment on the coaches comment. I do think about this a lot. I visually replay this event in my mind. I thought about this a lot, going through my child’s human rights complaint, determined as all hell, all the way to a hearing. If not me….than who? This is the ball of crap that has been hit hard straight into my zone. If not me, then who?

Who else is going to do this? My neighbour? Our dentist? What about my friend who lives across the street?

The answer may sound obvious, but there is a twist.

Of course, it has to be me. Or does it?

When you go through the human rights process, you can self-represent, or you can have a lawyer and there is a THIRD option.

You can have anyone be your advocate and be your representative. It could be your neighbour. It could be your friend who lives down the street. It could be anyone to support you and help you through the process.

Is there someone in your life who can work with you together on this project, and you all work together as a team? You can both be crafting emails. You can both be preparing for a mediation meeting. You don’t need to do this alone.

If not you, then you and a support person. That’s who.

Just something to think about and consider.

Here is information on the BC HRT website about this.

Rule 7 – Representation before the Tribunal – page 4 in the table of contents


How participants may be represented
(1) A participant may be represented by a lawyer or other person, or may be self-represented.

(2) The representative may be:

(a) lawyer or other person authorized to practice law in British Columbia under the Legal Profession Act, or

(b) a person who acts as a representative with no expectation of a fee, gain or reward, direct or indirect, from the participant they represent, except for persons identified in s. 15(3) of the Legal Profession Act.


You will see it in cases. It will look like this.

Text:

Tribunal Member: Devyn Cousineau

Agent for the Complainant: Dr. Bob Uttl

Counsel for the Respondent: Jamie Hoopes, Alyssa Paex, and Ilan Burkes