A Deaf education assistant has launched a human rights complaint against the Burnaby school district, alleging it continues to discriminate against her by not hiring her to work in hearing classrooms.
Tara Warford works at the BC Provincial School for the Deaf, operated by the school district on the same campus as Burnaby South Secondary, but she wants to work at a different school with students who are not Deaf or hard of hearing, according to a recent B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruling.
Warford alleges the district has refused to hire Deaf people to work in hearing schools.
She said the district will not provide interpreters so Deaf staff can work in classes with hearing students even though it provides them for non-Deaf staff so they can work in classes with Deaf students.
Warford also said district staff had used "discriminatory words" and said she was not qualified to teach outside BCSD.
'Ongoing contravention'
In its response to the complaint, the district denied discriminating against Warford and said it had accommodated her "to the point of undue hardship," according to the ruling.
The district said Warford had applied to transfer out of BCSD in 2018, 2019 and 2021, but, in each case, the district determined she did not meet all the duties and responsibilities of those positions.
"It said she did meet the duties and responsibilities of an EA at the BCSD, and her skills were particularly helpful to students there," stated the ruling.
Warford filed her original complaint in January 2022 and applied to amend it in July 2024.
In her amended complaint, she alleged a continuing contravention of the Human Rights Code starting in 2016, and claimed the district had created a "poisoned work environment" for her by repeatedly saying she was not capable of working effectively in classrooms outside the Deaf school.
The amended complaint said Warford had unsuccessfully applied for EA positions outside BCSD twice in 2016, once in 2017, twice in 2018 and once in 2021.
And when she reached out to the district about working at other schools, she was told there were no positions for which she was qualified in every year from 2018 to 2023, including at summer school, which is not offered at BCSD.
The school district argued the tribunal should not accept Warford's amended complaint because it contained new allegations that weren't in the original and that the time limit for bringing them up had expired.
The district said it was "not in the public interest" to accept the new allegations, and doing so would cause substantial prejudice to the district, according to the ruling.
Tribunal member Andrew Robb disagreed.
Public interest
While some of the incidents happened more than five years before Warford's complaint, and the delay was "significant," Robb ruled her allegations formed a claim of an ongoing contravention of the Human Rights Code, and the tribunal has the discretion to consider late allegations in such cases.
"I accept her submission that the pattern of the school district's alleged discrimination only became apparent over time, as her applications for jobs outside the BCSD were denied, year after year," Robb said. "I find this reason for her delay in filing the allegations in her proposed amendment weighs in favour of the public interest in accepting the amendment."
The district argued Warford's claims didn't amount to an alleged ongoing contravention of the code.
It said each of her applications to work outside BCSD was assessed independently and each incident involved distinct decisions and considerations.
But Robb noted the district, in its own response to Warford's complaint,"suggests that her disability was a consideration in each denial of her applications."
Robb said he was satisfied it was in the public interest to accept the late-filed allegations in Warford's amended complaint.
"The tribunal assesses the public interest in a late-filed complaint in light of the purposes of the code," he said. "These include identifying and eliminating persistent patterns of inequality, and providing a remedy for persons who are discriminated against."
Robb accepted the amended complaint and said the school district had 21 days to respond.
The tribunal has yet to rule on the complaint itself; Robb's ruling was limited to whether it would accept the amended version.
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is an independent, quasi-judicial body that deals with human rights complaints.
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