Room Clear Trackers: Counting Crisis, not Causes

The Surrey School District Parent Advisory Council recently launched an anonymous survey to track incidents of classroom “room clears.” The intention is understandable. Many of us have witnessed room clears firsthand. I have. I’ve ushered a class into the hall while a child struggled inside a room full of adults who didn’t know how to help. These experiences make us all more aware of the rising concerns in our schools.

When resources are scarce, the system fractures. Everyone feels it. Teachers feel helpless. Students feel unsafe. Families feel blamed. And data becomes the tool we reach for to make a case for support.

So now we track room clears.
But I am not convinced this tracker will give us the data we actually need.

Because we already know who these room clears disproportionately involve.
Disabled students.
Neurodivergent students.
Students whose distress is being communicated through behaviour because of barriers in the environment around them. 

A tracker might show the frequency, but it cannot show the conditions that created the crisis. And without context, data becomes a story told about children and families, rather than a story told with them.

Even with the best of intentions, if those intentions do not fully capture the issues, harm is still possible.
The survey claims that it is “not about blame” but about making the invisible visible. Yet I highly doubt that many parents of the students who are involved in room clears will complete it. Their experiences are often shaped by shame, fear of stigma, or already feeling unheard by the system. So the data becomes skewed and one-sided, reinforcing the visibility of those with power to tell the story, while those who are already invisible remain invisible still. This does not make anything more visible. It simply confirms what the system is already willing to see.

And I worry that the response to these numbers could be used to justify more exclusion.
Not more support.
Not more prevention.
Not more collaboration.
But more removal, more isolation, more seperate spaces, more movement backward into segregated models under the language of “safety.”

We have seen this before.

Our education system was built on the medical model of disability. Inclusion was never woven into its foundation. It was layered on top of a system that still interprets behaviour as something to be corrected rather than understood. And instead of investing in the changes needed to make inclusion real, we have forced students and teachers to hold the weight of a system not designed for them.

A room clear does not happen suddenly. It is the result of unmet needs, a lack of proactive supports, and environments that do not honour how some students move, communicate, learn, and exist.

And we must say this plainly:
Sometimes it is not the child who created the crisis.
I have seen adults corner a child with compliance-based expectations and threats, then act shocked when the child responds in the only way their nervous system can to protect itself. The tracker has no space for that story. No space for context. No space for accountability.

Just numbers.

And numbers without narrative can reinforce ableism instead of challenging it.

We do not need data that measures the symptoms of a system in distress.
We need transformation that addresses the cause.

We need the Ministry of Education to hold school districts accountable by requiring transparent, public reporting of school exclusions and the conditions that lead to them.

We need policy that ensures support is proactive, not something a child only becomes “entitled to” after a diagnosis or after their distress becomes a crisis. No child should have to fail repeatidly to be recognized as needing help.

Funding must shift from individual labels and categories to community-based needs.
Classrooms experience complexity collectively. Teachers and support staff hold that complexity collectively. The response must be collective too.

And every educator, administrator, and district leader needs meaningful training in disability rights, inclusive education, and neuroaffirming practice. Not a single in-service day. Not a one-time workshop. A foundational shift in how we understand behaviour, access, and belonging.

Room clears are not the problem.
They are the signal.

A warning that the system is failing children.

If we treat the warning as the issue, we will continue recreating the harm.

Now is not the time to track the crisis.
Now is the time to transform the conditions that are causing it.