Home » About K12 complaints » Glossary
accommodation refusal
Accommodation refusal refers to a situation where a school, employer, or other service provider declines a request to make changes or adjustments that would remove barriers and enable a person with a protected characteristic (such as a disability) to access services on an equal basis. Under human rights law in British Columbia, organisations have a duty to accommodate people’s needs — including disability-related needs — up to the point of undue hardship, meaning the accommodation must be reasonable and not impose excessive cost or disruption. When a request for accommodation is refused without legitimate reason, this can become the basis for a human rights complaint, because failing to remove barriers may amount to discrimination based on a protected ground. The duty to accommodate also requires meaningful engagement and individualized assessment before refusal.
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Humiliation harm: the invisible injury in schools
Many school harms leave no visible mark; they are social injuries, moments when a child’s distress becomes a spectacle and their dignity becomes collateral damage. For disabled students, particularly autistic children, those with ADHD, and those navigating trauma or anxiety, humiliation…
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The school is ignoring my child’s IEP
Individual Education Plans (IEPs) are meant to translate a child’s rights into daily practice at school. But many families discover that having an IEP on paper does not always mean the supports in it actually happen. This guide explains what an…
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My child is being excluded from class: room clears and partial schedules
If your child is regularly sent home early, placed on a shortened day, or repeatedly left alone in a classroom while other children are moved out, they are being excluded from education. Schools in BC sometimes present these arrangements as support…
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When does lack of support become child abuse?
There is a moment — and every parent of a disabled child in a BC school has felt it, even if they could not yet articulate it — when the institutional explanation for your child’s suffering stops making sense. The school…
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What does success actually look like in school complaints?
Success in school complaints rarely looks like the resolution families imagined when they began. There is almost never an apology. There is rarely an admission that something went wrong. The school will not, in most cases, say plainly that your child…
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What if the school says “this is just how we do things”?
Institutional normalisation is not a legal defence, and it is not a satisfactory answer. “This is our practice” is one of the most common responses families receive when they challenge something a school has been doing for a long time without…
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Can I pursue more than one complaint pathway at the same time?
Yes. Many families assume they must choose one path and exhaust it before opening another. In reality, different pathways address different dimensions of the same harm, and pursuing them in parallel is not only permitted — it is often strategically essential.…
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Is it normal for schools to ask parents to “work collaboratively” during serious harm?
“Collaboration” is often presented as a moral requirement, but it is not always appropriate — especially when serious harm is occurring. Collaboration assumes shared power and good faith. Many complaint situations involve neither. When a school controls information, staffing, documentation, and…
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How do I know if what’s happening at school is serious enough to complain about?
Many parents hesitate to complain because they’re unsure whether what they’re seeing is “bad enough.” We all know that schools are underfunded and that classrooms are struggling. Schools rely on that uncertainty. The truth is that most serious problems don’t arrive…
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Solving problems at school: crisis, restraint, and safety
This page addresses physical restraint, isolation, crisis intervention, and unsafe school conditions in BC schools, and specifically their impact on disabled and neurodivergent children, who are disproportionately subjected to these practices. A child in crisis is a child whose nervous system…