A North Okanagan family is speaking out about the way the Vernon School District is handling their daughter’s education.
The teen, who lives with mental health challenges, says she is being forced out of her high school and into an alternative program against her wishes.
“As soon as anything changes in my life, it’s like explosions for me. It’s like everything is over. It is horrible,” said Grade 10 student Kayla Rossner.
That difficulty with change is a big part of why the Coldstream teen doesn’t want to leave her high school.
“He is like, ‘I am sorry and…I wish we had the resources to have you at Kal,’ and all this stuff. He starts going on and I’m just bawling to him, like begging him not to do this,” Rossner said.
Her mother, Rose Carnevale-Rossner said she was equally “blindsided” by the news.
“Kayla was looking for answers from me and I honestly had said that I don’t know,” Carnevale-Rossner said.
Rossner says she was told she was no longer a student at Kalamalka Secondary School because she had missed too many classes.
Those absences, she says, are due to mental health concerns including depression.
“A lot of teenagers suffer with mental health and depression and they miss school and I feel like it shouldn’t be a reason to completely kick a student out of a school,” Rossner said.
The idea of switching Rossner to the Alternative Learning Program had been raised with the family and the parents had expressed openness to the idea. However, Carnevale-Rossner stressed that Rossner would need to be on board.
Carnevale-Rossner believed the school district’s plan was to introduce the teen to the Alternative Learning Program through an informal visit, but said that didn’t happen.
Instead, the family said, the teen was abruptly unenrolled from her existing secondary school.
In an email to the family, a district staff member said officials felt the Alternative Learning Program would be the best supportive placement for the teen.
Rossner feels the learning style won’t work for her and she hasn’t been attending and refuses to tour the space.
“I really can’t deal with any more change in my life. I can’t be at a new school. I can’t be with new kids,” Rossner said.
The school district said out of respect for students’ privacy it will not comment on specific cases.
In an email to the family, the superintendent said she would meet with Rossner but only if the student toured the Alternative Learning Program first so the teen is personally aware of the options.
“I just feel we weren’t heard with the district and I think other people need to know Kayla’s story. She is not trying to be difficult. This is the way she feels,” Carnevale-Rossner said.
“If Kayla has decided Kal is where she wants to be then we should work with that.”
The situation appears to have become a stalemate with Rossner refusing to tour the alternative program and the superintendent refusing to meet with her till she does.