The playground closes. Your kid loses recess. The field trip gets cancelled. And the school says it’s because one child’s behaviour made it “unsafe for everyone.”
Sound familiar?
Here’s what nobody tells you: this isn’t an accident, it’s the system working exactly as designed.
The trick that keeps us fighting each other instead of the government
British Columbia’s schools are severely underfunded—for all students, disabled and non-disabled alike. Overcrowded classrooms, exhausted teachers, crumbling infrastructure, cancelled programs. These aren’t signs that inclusion failed. They’re signs that the province deliberately refuses to invest what schools actually need.
But here’s the political strategy: when resources are scarce, schools deploy tactics that make disabled children visible as the problem while the funding crisis stays invisible.
They use collective punishment.
One disabled kid seeks sensory input on an ice field? Close the playground for everyone. One autistic student has a meltdown? Cancel the field trip. One child needs intensive support? Cut music class to “redirect resources.”
Your kid loses privileges. You feel frustrated. And the school explains—sometimes explicitly, sometimes through careful silence—that budget constraints make it difficult to support the complexity of this particular classroom, this particular child.
Why schools choose the cheapest option
Closing a playground costs nothing. Hiring enough staff to supervise sensory-seeking behaviour costs money the province refuses to provide.
Cancelling a field trip costs nothing. Arranging appropriate accommodation costs staff time and planning the province refuses to fund.
Letting a disabled child remain in constant dysregulation until they become so burnt out their parent has to keep them home costs the school nothing. Providing the regulation support, therapeutic relationships, and environmental modifications that would actually help costs resources the province systematically withholds.
Schools are responding rationally to impossible constraints—choosing the “free” option (collective punishment) over the expensive option (actual support) because provincial funding makes real inclusion structurally impossible.
The brilliant political move you’re not supposed to notice
When your child loses recess because a disabled student went on the ice, you see: one child’s behaviour → your child’s lost opportunity.
What you don’t see:
- Provincial funding formulas producing teacher ratios of 1:27
- Specialist caseloads of 1:1800 students making meaningful support impossible
- Categorical funding systems that delay help for months while kids spiral
- Infrastructure designed for narrow sensory profiles that trigger constant dysregulation
- Professional development that’s one-off workshops instead of sustained implementation support
The province has engineered a system where blame flows downward—toward disabled children, toward “permissive parents,” toward rising autism rates, toward anything except funding inadequacy—while government choices stay invisible. The province stays off the hook.
What this political trick accomplishes
By making disabled children visible as resource competitors while keeping funding inadequacy invisible, the system prevents the coalition that terrifies government: parents of disabled and non-disabled children organising together to demand adequate investment.
If schools declared resource inadequacy openly—”we cannot meet all children’s needs with current funding”—parents would mobilise collectively. But because the system engineers disabled children as the visible locus of resource failure, complaints remain concentrated among families the province calculates it can safely dismiss without broader political consequence.
You should be allies. Your kids share the same interests—reasonable class sizes, enough specialist support, functional buildings, teachers who aren’t drowning. But the system engineers division instead, ensuring parents fight each other while the province maintains austerity that harms everyone.
This serves government perfectly. Maintain lower taxes, avoid hard political choices about revenue and spending priorities, let disabled children absorb the blame for a crisis the province deliberately created.
The BC Supreme Court already ruled this unconstitutional—but nothing changed
Between 2001-2017, BC Liberal governments systematically dismantled public education through legislation stripping class size protections from collective agreements. Teachers fought this for fifteen years, finally winning a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 2016 declaring the legislation unconstitutional.
The ruling forced government to restore what was illegally stripped—at a cost of approximately $322 million annually just to get back to 2001 baseline. But that restoration happened sixteen years later, into a system where student needs had increased dramatically while funding stayed suppressed.
Current government inherited catastrophic underfunding requiring massive investment simply to achieve adequacy. They choose instead to implement inclusion policies—values statements, training workshops, documentation requirements—while refusing to fund what those policies require.
What adequate funding would actually cost
The Institute for Public Education demonstrates that if BC maintained education spending at the percentage of GDP the province allocated in 2000, school grants would increase by $3.8 billion annually—from $6.754 billion to $10.552 billion.
That’s a 56% increase. Not expansion beyond historical norms—restoration to what BC previously considered appropriate investment, before accounting for sixteen years of increased complexity.
Comparative analysis confirms BC could afford this: despite recording fourth-highest growth in inflation-adjusted per-student spending between 2012/13 and 2021/22, BC ranks eighth nationally in actual spending. Quebec increased spending 33.7% over the decade; BC managed only 6.7%.
The money exists. The political will does not.
What adequate inclusion funding would buy
Real inclusion requires:
- Staffing ratios that allow individualised attention: approximately 1:15 primary, 1:20 secondary, with EA hours based on assessed need rather than categorical designation
- Needs-based funding replacing systems that delay support and disconnect funding from requirements
- Specialist allocation structured as sustained therapeutic relationships rather than brief consultation triage
- Infrastructure investment creating sensory-appropriate environments—acoustic treatments, alternative lighting, quiet regulation spaces, varied seating and movement options
- Professional development restructured as sustained implementation support with regular coaching, collaborative planning time, and accessible specialist consultation
These investments remain within provincial fiscal capacity but require political courage to explain why investment must exceed pre-2001 levels, to articulate sixteen years of compounded damage, to make the case for revenue measures or budget reallocation despite electoral resistance.
Current government demonstrates unwillingness to marshal that courage, choosing instead to let disabled children remain scapegoats while funding inadequacy stays unaddressed.
Breaking the cycle requires seeing the trick
Disabled children aren’t the problem. Provincial austerity is.
When the playground closes, when your kid loses privileges, when the classroom descends into chaos—the province is making a choice to underfund schools while engineering your consciousness to blame disabled children instead of demanding adequate investment.
Recognise the scapegoat mechanism. Refuse the division it creates. Organise with other parents—of disabled and non-disabled children alike—to demand BC fund education at levels inclusion actually requires.
The province can afford it. What’s missing is political pressure forcing government to choose children over austerity.
Make them choose.