B.C. classrooms see ‘alarming trend’ of student exclusion: education group

A group tracking how students with disabilities and complex issues are treated in classrooms says it is seeing an alarming trend in B.C.’s schools.

A report from BCEdAccess suggests some continue to face separation, seclusion, or even restraint.

Executive Director Tracy Humphreys says the findings come from incidents reported by parents to the registered non-profit’s “exclusion tracker.”

“This is our fifth report tracking exclusions of students with disabilities from K-to-12 education in B.C. Like all of them, it looks at different types of exclusions — being sent home from school, only being allowed to go for part of the day for long periods of time, or gradual entry that is different from that of other Kindergarten students,” Humphreys told CityNews.

“But we also allow people to report things like not being allowed to attend a field trip, or not being allowed to be in band, or not getting the learning support they need to access the same education as other students.”

The group is highlighting trends around nursing supports and physical care, Kindergarten exclusion, exclusions lasting over 4 months, and the continued use of restraint and seclusion on disabled children and Humphreys feels it should be a wake-up call for British Columbians.

“Some of it is just ableism, people not believing that kids belong in the same spaces if they are disabled.”

“But a lot of it is staffing. There is a significant shortage of education assistants and there is a shortage of teachers, which tends to turn into specialist teachers who work with kids with disabilities being pulled out to teach regular classes instead,” she said.

“Sometimes it’s around kids exhibiting the symptoms of their disability. Things are not set up very well for them at their school and they start to react, some of them physically, and those are concerns when there’s not enough trained people who can properly support them.”

Reports include incidents where students have been restrained

In some cases, Humphreys says students end up being separated from the classroom or even restrained.

“We had 84 reports of students restrained and/or secluded last year, which may not sound like a big number to people but any greater than zero is too many, in our opinion. And these have severe psychological repercussions for kids and for families.”

As part of the report, BCEdAccess allowed students to fill out an optional section asking about their personal experiences.

“We had 70 students respond. This is a quote from a 10-year-old student with physical a disability on Vancouver Island about being restrained and secluded,” Humphreys said.

“They said, ‘I couldn’t be upset. I had to go to a dark room and the door was shut. I was scared and if I cried they said do you need to go to your room, and I didn’t want to go to school because I didn’t want to go to the room so I would try to run and hide. I told them I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to go in.

“‘It made me feel like I was a bad person and didn’t deserve to have anything good and I should be thrown away.'”

She says it is a prime example of how seclusion or restraint impacts a student and the kind of messages they internalize.

“One thing I didn’t touch on in the report that is really important is what other kids are observing when they see this happening and how it makes them feel. What happens if they make a mistake, what will happen to them? It also teaches them this is how we treat people when they are different.”

While Humphreys points to insufficient funding for enough supports in some schools, she says sometimes there simply aren’t enough people to fill all the positions.

“In some school districts, they have a ‘failure to fill’ rate. That’s the daily rate of how many positions they can’t fill that day because people are sick or for whatever reason, can’t come to work. It’s really high. In one district with 45 schools there is an average of 50 ‘failures to fill’ every day for education assistants.

“You can imagine what that looks like in those schools. It’s a significant shortage of people and it’s not so much about having the money. They are positions that exist but they can’t find the people. It’s a workforce issue and we’d like to see the province address that,” she said.

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However, beyond funding, Humphreys believes there is much more that can be done to address barriers for students with disabilities and complex needs.

“The good news is that some districts are working on it. Under the Accessible BC Act, they all need to have an accessibility plan, a committee, and and feedback mechanism. It was supposed to be in place for September 1, but I will tell you there are a lot of districts where that has not happened. Those accessibility plans are a great place to address these things — the barriers to access in their district.”

She adds the provincial government has the ability to address workforce issues, but also needs to make changes to legislation and policy.

“There is still legislation that says students with disabilities should be in regular classes unless administration feels it’s not a good idea. There is ableist and discriminatory language built into legislation that government has lots of control to fix.”

And while Humphreys’ focus is on the latest report from BCEdAccess, she says parents are already reporting incidents for this school year on the exclusion tracker.

“There are parents whose kids haven’t been able to attend school yet at all. I heard from a family whose child has physical disabilities and some other complex needs who is at school but they are literally in a room. they won’t put them in a regular classroom because they don’t feel they have the support. They haven’t even given the child a chance to be in the classroom to see whether it works. This is what I’m talking about — I understand it’s perhaps a support issue but it starts with ableism,” she said.

“They’ve already decided before even giving that child an opportunity to show that they can manage.”