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A BC school district has been ordered to pay up after it failed to accommodate a student's anxiety disorder.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal awarded her $5,000 after the student's parent complained about her workload and class environment, which was aggravating her anxiety disorder.

No one was publicly named in the decision, including the student and the school district.

The awarded centres around attempts by the student's mother to have the school accommodate for her anxiety, potentially reducing the workload.

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"The school had enough information to understand that something at school was adversely impacting the student in connection with her disabilities," the Dec. 19 decision read. "And it was in the best position to investigate the causes."

While the tribunal didn't conclude the district should have reduced her workload or changed her course, it said the school's failure to follow up on the mother's complaints in April 2019 violated the student's human rights.

Issues at the high school began in 2018 when the student graduated from elementary school and started her eighth grade year.

She was 12 years old and had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder since she was five, which manifested in her compulsions to pull out her own eyebrow and eyelash hairs. She struggled with deadlines, being singled out in class and loud classrooms, according to the decision.

When beginning at the new school, teachers and the principal assessed the new students for their language abilities as they tried to decide on the best classes to put them in.

The student was placed in a "Language 10" course, despite only being in the eighth grade. This was largely because the school couldn't fill a lower level course, so she and her classmates from the previous school were placed in a higher level.

She did well in the class and, despite the mother's complaints, the tribunal decided the student wasn't being discriminated against because she was placed in a more difficult course.

The student felt the teacher for that class, who also went unnamed in the decision, was unsupportive of her.

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The teacher's style focused on memorization and tests, which was stressful for her.

Instead of being accommodated for her anxiety, especially when it came to an oral presentation assignment in front of the class, the teacher treated her like she was "not trying," according to the decision.

Despite the student's overall success in the class, the student's mother said she would come home "exhausted" and a "zombie" after school. She was using her maximum daily anxiety medication and was chewing her finger nails.

Along with her complaints that the school didn't accommodate for her daughter, the mother also claimed the school district was "deceitful" and acted in bad faith by placing the student in the Language 10 course. She believed the school would separate her daughter into an easier class with only other students of her age.

The Tribunal dismissed the complaint as the school decided to make the best use of the classes they could offer that year, while adding the student never had any modified classes in the past, so there was no indication the student would need accommodations before her symptoms got worse in the spring.

Aside from her complaints to the Human Rights Tribunal, the mother levied complaints to the BC Ombudsperson and to the Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.

The ombudsperson found no issues with the school's decision to place her daughter in a higher-level class, nor with the way it communicated with the mother. The teacher regulator looked into complaints she filed against the principal, a teacher and a school counsellor. They were all dismissed.

The mom only got a fraction of the $20,000 award she was seeking for her daughter.

"The discrimination I have found in this case is relatively narrow. I have dismissed the parent's most forceful allegations," the decision read. "That said, I accept the impact on the student was serious."

The Tribunal said the student's discrimination fell within a two-month period, but did not decide whether it was the language class that solely aggravated her symptoms.

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