(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

A Kelowna mother successfully appealed when her daughter was forced to move schools. They are now taking the school district to court to claim nearly $1 million in damages.

Two competing lawsuits were filed within a day of each other. The Central Okanagan School District is fighting to reinstate its own ruling that forced the grade 8 student to attend a different middle school.

The school district's court filing is the only one of the two that explains why the student was suspended. The district claimed the 12-year-old shared nude photos of "another student and a boy" on social media amid an escalating interpersonal dispute.

"The school board initiated an investigation and found that the student had distributed the nude images to other students," court documents from School District 23 read.

iNFOnews.ca is not naming the student nor her mother to protect their privacy, though they are named in court documents.

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The student was first suspended from a Rutland neighbourhood middle school in November 2024. The school district said she could return to her studies if she went to a different middle school or chose online education. The parent and her daughter refused.

The student's mother appealed the school board's decision with the province's student appeal branch. Last month, the tribunal overturned the school board's decision, allowing her back to her original school.

It's that decision which the school district want to overturn in BC Supreme Court, but it's also the one that prompted the student to seek damages from the Central Okanagan School District.

According to the student's notice of claim, the school district "did not address evidence that (she) was being harassed and bullied."

The adjudicator is quoted as calling the district's decision "unreasonably punitive" and treated the placement decision as a seven-month suspension.

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Her notice of claim seeks a total $896,000 in damages, more than half for unspecified general damages. It seeks $130,000 for for "emotional distress for ongoing discrimination" and $290,000 for pain and suffering, along with $16,000 for the mother's time representing the student.

There's no lawyer named in the notice as the student representative.

The school district, meanwhile, disputes the tribunal's findings as "patently unreasonable" because adjudicator Kenneth Thornicroft had "no evidence" to support his findings.

The tribunal also lacked jurisdiction to overrule the school district because it was not a suspension but rather a proposed new school placement, according to the district.

The district also said it wasn't able to determine whether it was the suspended student or the victim who started the dispute, though the adjudicator sided with the student, who claimed she was targeted in a "bullying campaign."

Regardless of who started it, the student committed a serious crime by sharing the nude images, according to the school district's petition.

None of the claims have been proven and though each party has filed in court, they have not responded to each other's claims.

— This story was updated 3:50 p.m., May 15, 2025, to correct a reference to the middle school's location.

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