Blog
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Who gets left off the bus?
Across British Columbia, disabled children and complex learners are being left out through budget decisions. A bus route fills up. A counsellor’s door closes. A music room goes quiet. A specialist position stays vacant. A school day gets shorter. Each decision appears local, temporary, or administrative. For children and families, the result is much clearer: the support that made school possible disappears, and the child is expected to carry the loss. This essay traces how different districts, different line items, and different budget pressures keep producing the same outcome — children losing access while the system still appears balanced on…
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Happy Mother’s Day from BCEdAccess
This Mother’s Day, we honour every mother, grandmother, auntie, and caregiver carrying what the school system would not.
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Say here, if I call your name
Families have heard the deflections for years. We’ve catalogued them and answered each one. None explain disabled students losing access to school.
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Dear School District Leadership
This was posted by a parent in our Facebook group, and speaks to what so many other parents and children are struggling with in the education system. This letter needs to be read out loud in front of those decision makers who shape education. This is so spot on. Many thanks to the parent who wrote this and for allowing us to share this with all of you. Please share widely and feel free to send this to the Trustees in your school district. ******* Another month, another email … Dear School District Leadership, I am writing as the parent…
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New BC data on student absences
We’re sharing a new set of data on student absences in BC public schools, obtained through a provincial FOI request placed by one of our members. The dataset covers the 2022/23 and 2023/24 school years and includes absence rates and reasons for absence, broken down by inclusive education designation (for example, G designation for autistic students). We’re making this data available because we are seeing troubling patterns that are important for families to be aware of. Across every school district, students with inclusive education designations are absent at higher rates than students without designations. Absence rates differ markedly by region and designation…
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The budget that cries wolf: SD61’s deficit cycle
Every spring in British Columbia, school districts present budgets that force communities to choose between necessary programming such as: music or speech therapy, career education or school counselling, enrichment for all students or baseline access for disabled ones. No one should have to make these choices. It is like asking people to choose between clean air or clean water. These ‘choices’ are presented as the unavoidable arithmetic of balanced budgets and provincial funding formulas. It isn’t that simple. What is on the chopping block also signals what a district values, what they treat as negotiable, whose needs matter. For many…
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March back in after spring break
For families of children with disabilities and complex needs, spring break is rarely a break. It is two weeks in which the school layer is stripped away and you are left with what is actually happening: your child’s needs, your capacity, and the gap between the two that school was supposedly bridging. The equinox passed recently, and with it a cascade of thresholds: Nowruz, Eid al-Fitr, the tilting of the hemisphere toward longer light. Spring, in almost every tradition, is supposed to mean renewal. For many of our families, it means something harder. What the break reveals Different families come…
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The Mother of all Battles
This is a blog about topics that people write large books about. Patriarchy, motherhood, disability, economy, and oppression. All of these topics intersect when we talk about employment —specifically, when it’s mostly women giving up their jobs to fill a gap in government support. All of their stories show a pattern of a single story. “I work in healthcare and hold a master’s degree and currently only work part-time so I can support my child, whose lack of inclusion and supports in middle school makes attending school a significant daily hurdle” – Anonymous How is it that our education system…
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An Open Letter to Trustees and Advocates in the BC Public School System in Advance of the Upcoming Budget Season
NOTE: This guest blog is written by a fellow parent, advocate and member of BCEdAccess. THANK YOU!! Dear Trustees and Fellow Advocates, We’ve all been told that participation in the district’s budget process is a great way to advocate for more support for students with disabilities, but what exactly does that mean and how can we do that in a meaningful way? As we approach the upcoming budget season, I want to share with you some things I have learned and observed over the past few years while I’ve been following the BC Education system budget process. These observations are…
