The complaint: The Jones family received a letter from School District 57 (Prince George) stating that the parents could not go to their child’s school. The school district said the parents were behaving aggressively and refused to leave the grounds when asked.

The Joneses were unable to respond to the information in the letter because they were not aware they could appeal the district’s decision. The letter from the school failed to provide information about how to appeal its decision nor was this information publicly available. Concerned that the decision was unfair and not knowing what they could do, they reached out to us for help.

What we did: Under the School Act, districts can exclude people from school property. But those decisions must be fair. We investigated to see if the district had acted fairly in the way it informed the Joneses that they were not allowed to go to their child’s school.
Our investigation found that School District 57 did not provide the Joneses with information about how to appeal the decision or any deadlines that applied. In addition, the information about the exclusion process was not publicly available.

How we helped: The district contacted the Joneses and acknowledged that its staff made an error when it did not tell them how to appeal its decision.

The district also changed its process to make it more fair by:

• making policy and appeal processes publicly available by posting them on its website
• updating its template letters to include information about how to make an appeal

Why it matters: For a decision to be fair, individuals like the Joneses must be provided with information about how the decision was made and information about how to request an appeal.