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Every child should be able to learn, feel safe, and belong at school. When you speak with a school trustee candidate, ask what they will do to make that possible.
BCEdAccess first published questions for trustee candidates in 2018. This updated guide carries those concerns forward, with a focus on support reaching students, decisions families and caregivers can challenge, and commitments the public can track.
The superintendent leads district operations, and principals and staff make and carry out day-to-day educational decisions within legislation and board policy. Trustees work collectively through policy, budgets, and oversight. An individual trustee can bring motions, ask questions, debate budgets, vote, and build support for change. Boards also decide qualifying student appeals under section 11 of the School Act.
These questions ask candidates how they will use that role to improve access and find out whether board decisions are making a difference. Candidates should explain what they will propose locally and what they will advocate for provincially.
A vacant school staff position can reduce spending while leaving a child without instruction. Sending a student home can transfer responsibility to a parent who was supposed to be at work. Those costs matter, even when they do not appear in the district’s budget.
Going to an all-candidates forum, writing to a candidate, or chatting over coffee? Choose one or two questions that matter to you. Use the follow-up at the end to ask for specifics.
1. Support before crisis
Children need help before they reach a crisis. Some children struggle quietly or hide their distress. Schools need enough trained staff to provide support, cover absences, and work directly with students and collaborate with families and caregivers to understand the full picture. Children also need help while they wait for assessments.
What policy and budget changes would you bring forward to help students get support sooner? What reporting would you seek so the board can assess whether wait times and gaps in support are improving?
2. Support that reaches students and stays in place
An individual education plan (IEP) should guide the support a child receives each day. Some families and caregivers report that the accommodations noted on an IEP never reach a child. Others report that when a child begins coping better the very accommodations that allowed them to do so are withdrawn. Staff should be accountable for the accommodations mentioned in the IEP. Staff should involve the child and family before reducing support, and explain their decisions in writing.
How will you find out whether IEP accommodations are being provided and supports remain in place when they are still needed? What will you bring to the board if they are not?
3. Access to the school day
Schools should record when they ask a child to arrive late, leave early, or stay home. Records should distinguish those decisions from family-chosen absences. Plans to restore access need to respect the child’s needs with deadlines for adults to provide support. Families and caregivers should not face penalties for protecting children from unsafe or inaccessible conditions.
How will you ensure that your policies align with human rights and a student’s right to equitable access to an education? What will you do about school exclusions?
4. Access to school life
Children need access to field trips, electives, sports, friendships, and school events. Schools should plan staffing and accessibility from the start. A child’s participation should not depend on a parent being available to help.
Access also includes transportation, quiet and appropriately equipped support spaces, working lifts and doors, accommodations, and safe evacuation plans. The district’s accessibility plan should address barriers raised by students, families and caregivers, and the accessibility committee, with priorities, costs, and timelines for action.
When families, caregivers, and district accessibility committees identify barriers to participation for disabled students, how will you ensure that the district sets priorities, provides funds to remove the barriers, and reports publicly on progress?
5. Safety for students and staff
Students and staff need safe conditions and help before distress becomes a crisis. Districts should examine bullying, missing support, and school conditions when they review serious incidents. Disabled children must not be blamed for failures to provide support.
Families and caregivers need prompt information when their child is injured, physically restrained, or placed alone in a space they cannot leave. Board policies should set clear expectations for prevention, notification, and reviewing what happened.
What changes would you seek in board safety policy to prevent harm, ensure families and caregivers receive same-day notice of serious incidents involving their child, and require reporting on steps taken to prevent further harm?
6. Clear decisions and timely remedies
Families and caregivers need written reasons when schools deny or change support, and a clear way to challenge those decisions. Section 11 of the School Act allows students and parents to appeal staff decisions that significantly affect a student’s education, health, or safety. This includes a failure to make a decision. Boards must decide these appeals within 45 days of receiving them and promptly report the decision to the person appealing.
Families and caregivers report being drawn into informal conversations with no clear deadline. Weeks or months can pass while their child continues without needed support. Districts should publish clear complaint procedures and deadlines, explain how to submit an appeal, and confirm when it was received. Informal discussions should not become a barrier to a timely decision.
What changes would you propose to the district’s complaint procedures and section 11 appeal bylaw so families and caregivers can easily use them, know when the appeal clock starts, and receive decisions within clear deadlines? How would you address delays that leave a child without support?
7. Accessible participation and follow-through
Families and caregivers need clear information about how to attend board meetings, raise concerns, and ask questions. Meeting times, unclear procedures, and a lack of interpreters can prevent participation. Disabled parents may also need accommodations.
Boards need to hear from Indigenous, racialised, newcomer, and 2SLGBTQIA+ students with disabilities, and families and caregivers facing poverty. Families should have opportunities to contribute before decisions are made.
Families and caregivers also give their time to accessibility committees and consultations. They describe barriers, explain harm, and recommend changes. Too often, families and caregivers report that public summaries turn those concerns into positive messages about the district’s commitment to inclusion. The specific problems disappear, and participants receive no clear response.
Districts should accurately record the concerns raised and report back to participants. They should explain what will change, who is responsible, and when action is due. They should also explain why they delayed or declined recommendations. Boards should make decisions openly wherever possible and explain when confidentiality is needed.
Families and caregivers need clear information about how to attend board meetings, raise concerns, and ask questions. Meeting times, unclear procedures, and a lack of interpreters can prevent participation. Disabled students and parents may also need accommodations.
Boards need to hear from Indigenous, racialised, newcomer, and 2SLGBTQIA+ students with disabilities, and families and caregivers facing poverty. Students and families should have opportunities to contribute before decisions are made.
Families and caregivers also give their time to accessibility committees and consultations. They describe barriers, explain harm, and recommend changes. Too often, families and caregivers report that public summaries turn those concerns into positive messages about the district’s commitment to inclusion. The specific problems disappear, and participants receive no clear response.
Districts should accurately record concerns and explain what will change, who is responsible, and when action is due. They should explain why recommendations were delayed or declined. Boards should make decisions openly wherever possible and explain when confidentiality is needed.
What will you propose to make participation accessible and ensure the board hears concerns and recommendations from students, families and caregivers, and the accessibility committee? How will you seek public follow-up that names the actions, responsible staff, and deadlines?
8. Public reporting that shows what children experience
Boards need to know who is missing school, waiting for support, or leaving because their needs were not met. Every reported measure, such as those described in Framework for Enhancing Student Learning (FESL), should be broken down by individual designation category and non-designated status. For example, reports should show the percentage of students in each group who earned a Dogwood graduation diploma, with Evergreen school completion certificates reported separately. Broad averages can hide substantial differences in students’ access.
Reports should help the board assess whether its policies and spending are improving access, participation, and outcomes. Keeping a child at home cannot count as successful inclusion. Where information is missing, boards should ask how that gap will be addressed.
What information would you ask the board to receive and publish about lost learning time, gaps in support, and outcomes for disabled students? How would you respond if you were told that this information was operational and outside the board’s role?
9. Budgets that protect children’s access
Families and caregivers repeatedly face budget warnings followed by cuts to disability support and programs such as music that help children learn, connect, and want to attend school. Families and caregivers should not have to defend their children’s basic needs every budget season or compete with other families to protect valued programs.
Boards should question the choices presented to them. They should examine administration, executive pay, and legal spending alongside student services. When districts report an inclusive education funding gap, they should explain which costs and funding sources they counted. Before approving cuts, boards should ask what alternatives staff considered and how each option would affect children.
Boards should also compare budget forecasts with year-end results. When districts report a stronger financial position than expected, boards should explain what changed, how much came from cuts or unfilled positions, and which funds are available to restore services. A surplus does not erase the learning and support children lost. Families and caregivers should not have to replace public funding through donations and fundraising.
The Province must provide adequate funding. Boards must account for how districts spend it and whether support reaches students.
Will you challenge the assumptions and choices behind proposed cuts, seek alternatives that protect children’s access, and require public reports explaining the year-end results and any plans to restore services?
10. Commitments families and caregivers can track
Candidates can commit to bringing motions, proposing policy changes, asking questions, and voting. The board decides whether proposals pass. Trustees can report on their public actions and press for updates on decisions the board has made. Trustees seeking re-election can also point to their record.
What will you bring forward in your first year, when will you act, and how will you report back on what you proposed, how you voted, and what changed?
Ask for specifics
You can use this follow-up with any question:
What specific action will you take, by when, and how will families and caregivers know whether it happened?
Good intentions are not enough
In Who gets left off the bus?, we described how funding announcements can coexist with cuts to transportation, unfilled support positions, and shortened school days. In Don’t blame a child for drowning, we asked who is responsible for correcting unsafe school conditions, and why adults in charge keep blaming children for systemic failures.
A government can express support for inclusive education, announce investments, and report genuine progress while many children continue to go without the support they need. Progress matters. So does identifying who has not benefited, what barriers remain, and who is responsible for removing them.
Inclusive education requires more than a feel-good poster, a marketing campaign, or a statement of shared values. It requires adequate funding, trained staff, accessible spaces, and support that reaches children.
Accountability means knowing who must act, by when, and what happens when support is not provided.
Ask every candidate these questions. Ask at all-candidates meetings, at the doorstep, by email, and in public discussions. Include the friend who is running, the candidate whose values you share, and the incumbent whose efforts you respect. Apply the same expectations to everyone.
Raise your hand for inclusive education. Ask every candidate. Let’s make inclusive education the centre of this election.
It’s election season!
Stay tuned for our questions for provincial election candidates about funding, policy, and accountability for inclusive education.
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