What is Reasonable? – Duty to Accommodate
A lot of human rights decisions from tribunals will focus on whether the school’s response and decision making was reasonable. Where the accommodations reasonable? Was the delay reasonable? Did they try and mitigate the harm? Was that reasonable? Given what they knew at the time about the child’s disability-related needs, did they make a reasonable […]
Getting Documents!
Alright, we have seen how the Ministry can “inadvertently” not disclose documents. (wink wink). Yeah right! Lawyers not disclosing documents and withholding evidence they shouldn’t be, isn’t a new issue AT ALL! They can pull some sneaky shit. This is one area they like to take advantage of, and sometimes it takes a legal process […]
The Tribunal Take on Witness Testimony
I find reading human rights decisions FASCINATING!!! In this decision: Castro Mosquera v. North Horizon Immigration Consulting Inc., 2026 BCHRT 61 The tribunal member goes into detail about how a tribunal member will interpret witness testimony! ******* [15] For all witness testimony, I start from the presumption that the witness is telling the truth: Hardychuk v. […]
Reducing EA Support Hours = Discrimination
R.B. v. Keewatin-Patricia District School Board, 2013 HRTO 1436 This case is about the school district reducing a student’s Education Assistant (EA) support hours who was doing well with the EA support. The student originally had a full-time EA, and the district cut the time in half. The reduction in support hours led to an […]
Improper Conduct – Hiding Disclosure
There is a new human rights decision out today, and it is not education-related. BUT, there is a part of this decision that I do want to highlight because what this person experiences is something parents need to be aware of. I struggled with disclosure issues. What a fight! Even if they tell you they […]
Liability in Education
One aspect of education that was really hard for me to swallow and accept is the concept of liability and education operating as a business. They almost broke my heart over this. They make a lot of decisions based on liability. It’s depressing and sad really. Like seriously….the kids aren’t the priority?? (I was so […]
HR Decisions in Year 2025
Here is a list of the BC human rights decisions related to students and education (K-12) that were posted publicly in the year of 2025. Only 2 decisions show parents/caregivers who had legal counsel, the rest were self-representing parents. These decisions are important as we learn how the tribunal will make decisions about similar issues […]
Systemic Impacts of Scarcity in Education
I’d like to bring up the subject of scarcity and the concept of applying the impacts of limited resources in the education system. It could be physical, social, emotional, or mental scarcity. Limited resources change how people interact and behave at the most primal survival levels. There are already many scholar reports on how scarcity […]
What Does Ableism Look Like in Schools? It Looks Like This!
When a teacher daily allows a student with a learning disability to fail their class, but does not even lift a finger to inform the case manager or parent, that is ableism and its discrimination. Disabled children failing, falling behind and being excluded without accommodations have become the normality of the education system. It’s so […]
Trying to Collaborate in Good Faith
Trying to collaborate in good faith and discuss “reasonable accommodations” can be the real murky (stressful) part of the accommodation process that has the most potential for disaster. This is where we are at our most vulnerable. Here is why. (Please read every single word of the next paragraph. Twice if necessary.) As part of […]
