Who gets left off the bus?
Across British Columbia, children with disabilities and complex learners keep facing barriers that take away their right to learn and belong.
Barriers slowly make school feel impossible. A bus route is cut, and the family struggles to get their child there. A position is left vacant, and a child loses the one-to-one support they needed to participate. A service is placed “under review,” and children who desperately need help wait. Budget decisions become a slow attrition: missed days, partial schedules, and exclusion.
“The Board has been forced to make difficult, and sometimes heartbreaking, decisions around busing for diverse learners… while meeting its goal of delivering a high-quality education for every single student in Surrey.”
— Terry Allen, Vice-Chair, Surrey Board of Education
The board calls it a budget decision: routes, staffing, service capacity. The system files the loss under staffing pressure, funding pressure, a line item to be managed. The language is administrative. The harm is not. A child’s missing day costs the budget nothing. It costs the child everything.
The Province announces record funding. The funding is real. But, the access? The total climbs while the child’s school day shrinks. The minister cuts the ribbon while, inside the building, the support a child counted on quietly disappears.
Families are asking one question a provincial total can never answer: who is being left off the bus?
The bus stopped coming
Transportation was cut. For some children, the route was the one thing that made attendance possible. What happens when the bus does not come?
In Surrey (SD36), busing for diverse learners was cut while closing a $16-million budget gap. In Greater Victoria (SD61), the district stopped accommodating new accessible-busing requests in 2025–26, citing bus and driver capacity, and put eligibility “under review” — even as it proposed trimming inclusive-learning transportation further.
For some children, accessible busing is the condition that makes school reachable. When the service fills up, access disappears without ever appearing as a formal cut.
What children lost:
daily attendance, consistency, and the ride that turned enrolment into actually arriving.See: SD61 transportation page and Surrey Schools budget announcement.
The music room went quiet
In budgets, music is called enrichment and is one of the first things that gets cut. But for some children, music is the part of the day that makes the rest of it survivable: the one room where they are good at something, the ensemble that gives them a reason to walk in on a hard morning.
For example, in Greater Victoria (SD61), the district proposed slicing $250,000 from middle-school music while placing the program in the same “no obligation” budget category as instrument repair.
What children lost:
A sense of belonging, something that inspired them, a place where they could try hard things and improve slowly and still feel like a success, and the thing that made school worth going to at all.See: Victoria News.
The counsellor’s room was locked
It can take months of trust before a child learns to walk toward help instead of away from it — to knock before the day falls apart rather than after. That trust depends on the door being open when they finally reach it.
For example, in Qualicum (SD69), the district’s own budget materials identified family concerns about access to counselling, SLP, OT, and assessments while warning that the 2026–27 budget response would mostly fall on staffing tied to enrolment decline and, where possible, non-enrolling positions. CBC later reported that the district PAC said the proposed cuts included learning support teachers, a school counsellor, education assistants, child and youth care workers, social workers, and teachers. Their budget meeting is upcoming.
What children lost:
emotional safety, and the one adult who made the day feel survivable.See: Budget Planning 2026-27 and CBC News
The Indigenous Education teacher is gone
Belonging for an Indigenous child is not built by a poster or a single cultural day. It is built through presence and relationship — an adult inside the building who knows the child’s name and family, and who carries Indigenous knowledge with the authority to shape how the school teaches.
For example, in Kootenay Lake (SD8), the district is replacing a dedicated Aboriginal Academic Success teacher in elementary and middle schools with support-workers — a change families and the Nelson teachers’ association say arrived without meaningful consultation.
What children lost:
Cultural safety, continuity, a trusted adult who knew them, and a foundation for strong graduation rates for Indigenous children in Nelson, BC.See: The Free Press.
A child is unable to learn to communicate
A communication device only works when adults have time to model it and treat what it says as real communication. Without that, the device becomes equipment on a desk. The child may be surrounded by people and still unheard.
For example, in Greater Victoria (SD61), the budget left itinerant support — a 0.2 FTE speech-language pathologist alongside psychology and deaf-and-hard-of-hearing time — as vacancies the district would simply not fill. The children who needed those professionals are waiting while the support never arrived.
What children lost:
their voice, independence, and the chance to be understood.See: Victoria teachers say budget cuts sacrifice student supports.
The classroom support never arrived
A child who needs an education assistant to stay regulated in a busy room does not stop needing that person when the position goes unfilled. The need stays; only the support leaves — and the child is quietly moved to the hallway, close enough to be counted and far enough to be forgotten.
The Province promised an education assistant in every K–3 classroom, but Education Minister Lisa Beare has said 20% of those classrooms still do not have one. At the same time, districts facing budget shortfalls are being told these are “local” decisions.
What children lost:
participation, regulation, safety, and the practical support that made inclusion feel possible.See: North Shore News.
The school day got shorter
A shortened day rarely arrives as a decision anyone signs. It arrives as “just for now” — a pickup at eleven, a timetable trimmed until staffing stabilises, a temporary arrangement that hardens into months while a child’s classmates keep learning through the afternoon.
For example, across BC, reduced and partial timetables seldom appear as a budget line at all. They show up later, family by family, in the Exclusion Tracker: a child sent home early, a timetable reduced, a full school day quietly lost.
What children lost:
instruction, friendship, routine, and the message that they belonged.
One million school days were missed
Every morning begins with a small act of care: a name is called, and the school marks whether the child is there. For thousands of disabled children across BC, the answer is increasingly absent — a desk that stays empty, a name called into a room that has learned to expect silence.
For example, when BCEdAccess obtained provincial absence data through a member’s Freedom of Information (FOI) request, the same pattern held in every one of BC’s 60 school districts: students with designations were absent at higher rates than their peers. Over two years, the gap amounts to more than one million additional missed school days — more than a million times a disabled child was somewhere other than the classroom that was meant to include them.
What children lost:
presence itself — the days, the learning, and the friendships that only happen when a child is in the room.
“Currently, 20 per cent of K-3 classes do not have education assistants.”
— Education Minister Lisa Beare, quoted by Rob Shaw
Eight stories, one design
A bus route. A music room. A counsellor. An Indigenous Education teacher. A speech-language pathologist. An education assistant. A shortened day. An absence record.
Different districts. Different line items. The same result.
A cut rarely looks like a cut. A district leaves an education assistant position vacant and calls it attrition. It delays a specialist hire and calls it staffing pressure. It caps accessible transportation and calls it capacity. It places a service “under review” and calls it process. It shortens a child’s day and calls it temporary. The child loses the ride, the adult, the communication support, the counselling, the instruction, or the safe way to stay in the room — and the budget records no denial. The service simply fails to arrive.
A district that spends early to keep a disabled child in school carries a visible cost it may have to defend before the year is out. A district that holds the vacancy, narrows the service, or trims the timetable carries nothing that shows. It makes the year-end position look safer. So caution becomes the rational choice, and a child’s access becomes the variable the system adjusts to balance its books.
When the year closes in surplus, the system calls that prudence. For the child who spent it at home, in the hallway, on a partial day, or without a way to communicate, the surplus is the precise measure of the support that never reached them.
Everyone in the chain can point to a real constraint. The Ministry can say districts make local decisions. Districts can say they were never funded for the need in front of them. Schools can say they are working with the staff they have. Every one of those statements can be true at once. The child still has no support.
A process that produces the same result through eight different doors is not failing. It is working as designed.
“My kid hasn’t been able to go to public school for 3.5 years, after many years of exclusion and advocacy exhaustion. As a solo parent, I had no choice but to pull them due to debilitating mental health burnout and IEP reqs being ignored. Which means I had to give up my career and extended health benefits to stay home with them. The lack of equitable access to education created this problem. Fixing that is the only way to get us and our kids out of this.”
— BCEdAccess Member
The Province already knows
The Ministry knows all of this. Its own 2025 Estimates Notes show that in 2024/25, 96,598 students — 14% of BC’s student population — held inclusive education funding designations. In the past 10 years:
- Overall enrolment rose 11.6%
- Inclusive education designations rose 46.6%
- Autism Spectrum Disorder designations rose by 192%
That is a structural change in who public education serves.
Qualicum’s 2026–27 budget materials state that there is “no change in per pupil rates” while “Unique Student Needs numbers continue to grow.” Need rises. The rate holds.
The Ministry knows the consequence, too. Its briefing materials treat exclusion as established fact, citing the Ombudsperson’s investigation into school exclusions and the Exclusion Tracker. The same notes concede that disabled students are being excluded from educational experiences “often due to a lack of available support staff.”
Children miss school because the adult who would make attendance possible is absent. In their 2025 Estimates Notes, the Ministry writes that partners:
“continue to express concerns that the ministry’s policy framework and funding model for students with disabilities or diverse abilities are outdated and not responsive to the actual needs of students and families.”
So the Province knows need is rising. It knows exclusion is happening. It knows the shortage of support staff is part of why. It knows the funding model no longer fits the children it serves. And still the process continues, year after year, rewarding the vacancy over the hire.
Why does the budget process still make it safer to save the line item than to support the child?
— BCEdAccess Member
One room got its music back
In Greater Victoria, the $250,000 cut to middle-school music was reversed — restored in the reinstated trustees’ first meeting back, alongside the kindergarten early childhood educators and the career programs. That is good news for those children. It should also worry the rest of us.
The music survived through a stroke of luck: a board returned, a fundraiser came through, and the money was reallocated at the last possible moment, just as layoff notices were about to go out.
That is a save, not a plan. And a save that depends on the right people arriving in the right week is not something a family can count on. This is not an equitable system.
A child’s chance to learn music should not ride on a rescue or a fundraiser. A parent should be able to send their kid to school in September and know every year that the music program will be there.
A right a child cannot reach is not a right
Transportation, communication support, counselling, Indigenous Education, education assistants, learning support, and a safe full-day place in the room are not extras. They are the conditions that make school accessible at all, and a child cannot use a right they cannot reach.
The moment a budget treats any of them as discretionary — an enrichment line, a maintenance item, a service to be reviewed — it has already decided that some children’s access is optional.
When disabled students begin disappearing from school, the first question should be what barrier pushed them out, and the honest answer usually sits inside the building, not inside the family. The absence gap is evidence that promised support never arrived.
What the child loses
Budgets name the line item. Families live the consequence.
| Budget language | What the child experiences |
|---|---|
| Transportation pressure | The child cannot get to school |
| Non-enrolling staff reduction | The trusted adult is gone |
| Education Assistant vacancy | The child cannot stay safely in the room |
| Service under review | The family waits while access disappears |
| Partial timetable | The child loses instruction and belonging |
| Absence marked unspecified | Exclusion disappears |
| Balanced budget | The cost lands on the child |
A balanced budget is not a success if it was balanced by making children disappear.
Budget Recommendation Submission
We are asking for public education to be funded and governed as though disabled and vulnerable children belong inside it. Here is our budget submission:
Across all 60 BC school districts, the same pattern holds: students with disabilities miss far more school than their peers — over one million additional days in two years. The supports that keep them in class (a bus route, an education assistant, a specialist) are cut, frozen, or left vacant, and the child carries the loss. Budgets are choices. We ask the Committee to fund, track, and enforce disabled children’s access to school as the right it already is.
Fund inclusive education to the actual, current needs of students
Fund inclusive education to the real, identified needs of students. Keep funding tied to each designated child, and raise the frozen supplemental rates so funding grows as identified need grows.
The Ministry’s own figures show why: in 2024/25, 96,598 students — 14% of BC’s student population — held an inclusive education designation. Since 2015/16, enrolment rose 11.6%, but inclusive education designations rose 46.6%, and autism designations rose more than 192%, from 7,794 to 22,824. The population public education serves has changed structurally. The funding has not kept pace.
When need rises and the rate holds, districts ration. Supports are cut, left vacant, or placed under review — and the child loses the bus, the education assistant, the specialist, the counselling, or the safe place in the classroom. Across all 60 districts, students with disabilities missed more than one million additional school days than their peers over two years.
The Ministry already knows. Its own briefing materials acknowledge disabled students are excluded “often due to a lack of available support staff,” and that partners view the funding as “outdated and not responsive to the actual needs of students and families.”
We recommend the Province fund inclusive education to actual, identified need — the staff, transportation, specialists, communication support, counselling, Indigenous Education, and learning support that make attendance possible — and reject any shift to a prevalence-based model that decouples funding from the individual child or uses reform to cap total dollars. Supporting a disabled child must be the funded, expected, and enforceable choice, not a local cost to be rationed.
Tie senior leadership compensation to the attendance gap
Across BC, students with disabilities miss far more school than their peers. Using provincial absence data obtained through Freedom of Information, we found the same gap in every one of the province’s 60 school districts — more than one million additional missed school days over two years.
The budget process produces this, and it runs on asymmetry. The financial risk of acting sits with the district; the human risk of waiting sits with the child. A district that spends early to keep a disabled child in school carries a visible cost it may have to defend. A district that holds the vacancy, narrows the service, or trims the timetable carries nothing that shows, and its year-end position looks safer. So caution becomes the rational choice, and a child’s access becomes the variable the system adjusts to balance its books.
Today, that cost lands in only one place. A superintendent’s compensation rises, negotiated and recorded, while a disabled child’s missed days dissolve into “unspecified,” accounted for nowhere. The people who balance the budget keep their salaries; the child loses the classroom, the friendships, and the year.
We recommend the Province hold increases to executive and senior administrative compensation until the absence gap between students with and without designations closes, and require districts to report that gap publicly each year. Bind the pay of the people who balance the budget to the outcome the budget produces, so the cost of exclusion finally registers somewhere other than the body of a child.
Our full analysis of the provincial absence data: https://bcedaccess.com/2026/05/03/say-here-if-i-call-your-name/
Publish what the Government of British Columbia is spending on legal fees fighting families seeking accommodations for their children
When a family asks for the support a child needs and the district refuses, public money begins moving in the opposite direction — away from accommodation and toward lawyers, delay, and defence. Every one of those dollars measures a choice: money spent denying access instead of providing it.
A member filed Freedom of Information request ECC-2026-60868 for the Ministry’s legal-services expenditures and received a two-page partial disclosure, with the figures redacted under section 14 of FIPPA — the legal-advice exemption. The public is not permitted to see what the government spends fighting families. We are granted no such protection: we carry the exclusion, the legal costs, and the exhaustion of fighting for our children — in full view, with nothing redacted.
We recommend the Province require every district and the Ministry to track and publish, annually, every dollar spent on legal services contesting human rights complaints and disability-accommodation claims — and to release in full the records already requested, including ECC-2026-60868. A cost the public can see is a cost the system has to justify, and the first step toward spending that money on support instead.
BCEdAccess is asking the Province to fix the budget process that lets disabled and vulnerable students lose access while the system still appears balanced on paper. The Province already knows enough to act. We are asking the Province to fund, track, and enforce access to education as the right it already is.
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