Langley mom upset after autistic son and his classmates' photos left out of yearbook — again

Langley's School District 35 is blaming a layout mistake for why a class of students with autism did not get their class photos in their middle-school's yearbook.

Debra Benning says H.D. Stafford Middle School's Division 22 class, which includes her son, Riley, and about eight or nine other students with autism, were the only kids in the yearbook without professionally-taken photos.

Instead, there was only a page of candid photos of the kids.

"My kid's picture was a picture of him sideways with an iPad four inches from his face," Benning told On The Coast guest host Gloria Macarenko. "It didn't even have the names stating who the kids are. All the other kids have a name under their picture."

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Benning says the omission of her son's class photo in the 2015-16 yearbook follows a similar situation with the school's previous yearbook.

In that edition of the yearbook, Division 22 wasn't featured at all, she says.

"[Riley] said, 'mum, I deserve to have my picture on that page,'" Benning said.

District says incident a 'learning experience'

School District 35 spokesman Ken Hoff says the omission of the class's photos was not intentional.

He says Division 22 had a different page layout, which caused the page with the group shot to not be included.

"It's unfortunate, but this is something, moving forward, we'll use as a learning experience," he said.

"It's certainly not reflective of our attitudes here that this error occurred in the yearbook. … It's something we will be looking at as far as our staff and our students, how we can be more inclusive in the future."

Hoff said he was not aware of the complete omission of Division 22 the previous year and could not explain why that omission may have happened.

Benning says when the first omission happened, H.D. Stafford's then-principal apologized and assured her the situation was an oversight that wouldn't be repeated.

"I was expecting to see a somewhat improved page when I flipped to Division 22 this year, and to my horror, it was actually worse than last year," Benning said.

"At least last year they put ... the teacher's name on it. They didn't even recognize the teachers or the SEAs on this page."

Advocate: schools have 'a long ways to go' 

Inclusion B.C. executive director Faith Bodnar says it's not good enough for the district to simply treat this as a learning experience.

She says she was surprised by such a "terrible" oversight, especially because District 35 has a good reputation when it comes to including students with special needs.

"I think if they don't remedy it, it speaks to whether they're truly committed to making him a full part of school life," Bodnar said. "He has a right to be in that school like every other student, and he needs to be recognized and acknowledged like every other student."

She says the school district should apologize and reprint the yearbooks to include Riley's class.

"These are important events in a student's life, to be in the yearbook. He's going to have that yearbook his whole life," she said.

"The first place you go in the yearbook is the picture of you, right? He's no different, and his family's no different. They're proud of him. He should be proud of going to school. He should see his face and himself reflected in his yearbook."

She says school districts have "a long ways to go, clearly," and while they need to take a leadership role on including special needs students, she says the Ministry of Education needs to be more involved as well with better support and funding for teachers.

Benning says H.D. Stafford's new principal has reached out to her with an apology and is looking at getting reprints of the yearbooks.

She says she doesn't want all the books to be reprinted, but just wants her son and his classmates to get the yearbooks that their class photos are in.

"I'm not looking at this to be a costly situation, I'm looking at it to be a learning situation," she said.

With files from Rachel sanders and CBC Radio One's On The Coast

To hear the full story, click the audio labelled: Langley mom upset after autistic son and his classmates' photos left out of yearbook