New Brunswick Partial Day Plans: What Policy 323 Says and How to Fight Illegal Exclusion

The phone call comes mid-morning: your child needs to be picked up from school. Tomorrow too. And the day after. What the principal presents as a "temporary transition plan" for your child may actually be an illegal exclusion — and New Brunswick parents are experiencing this at alarming rates.

The province's Child, Youth and Senior Advocate, Kelly Lamrock, dedicated significant portions of the 2024 and 2025 Wake Up Call and A Policy of Giving Up reports to this issue. The finding: schools across New Brunswick are using partial day plans not as a last-resort therapeutic strategy, but as a way to manage severe Educational Assistant (EA) shortages. Children — disproportionately those with disabilities — are being sent home because the school lacks staff to support them, and the practice is being called something it is not.

What Policy 323 Actually Permits

Policy 323 (Partial School Days) is the provincial policy that governs when a student's instructional time may be reduced. It is a narrow, tightly defined authority — not a general tool for schools to use whenever a student is difficult to support.

Under Policy 323, a partial day arrangement:

• Is a tier-three, last-resort strategy, meaning all other supports and interventions must have been tried and documented first
• Is time-limited — these plans are not intended to continue indefinitely
• Requires written documentation in the student's PLP explaining the educational rationale and the plan for returning to full-time instruction
• Must include a projected timeline for reintegrating the student to a full school day
• Cannot be implemented simply because an EA is unavailable or because the school is under-resourced

The 25% rule is also relevant: Policy 323 dictates that varying a student's learning environment for more than 25% of regular instructional time requires stringent, documented justification tied to educational need — not administrative convenience.

If your child is being sent home regularly and none of these procedural requirements have been met, the partial day arrangement is not compliant with Policy 323. It is an exclusion.

Why This Keeps Happening

NB schools are under extraordinary pressure. The 2025–2026 data shows that 29.3% of students are chronically absent province-wide. A significant portion of this is driven not by family choice but by schools that cannot accommodate students with complex needs due to EA shortages and the absence of specialized support staff.

When a school lacks the EA coverage to safely manage a student's dysregulation or behavioral needs, the path of least resistance is to send the child home. Parents, especially those who work, are placed in an impossible position: refuse to pick up and risk the child being left without supervision, or comply and watch their child fall further behind academically.

The Advocate's office has been unambiguous: this is not a grey area. Sending a child home because the school lacks staff is not a legitimate use of Policy 323. It is a failure of the school's legal obligation to provide education to an exceptional student under the NB Education Act.

How to Identify an Illegal Partial Day Plan

Ask these questions about your child's situation:

1. Was a PLP meeting held before the partial day plan was implemented? A partial day arrangement must be documented in the PLP with explicit educational rationale. If the school simply called you and asked you to pick up your child without any formal meeting or PLP amendment, the arrangement has no legal foundation.

2. Is there a written timeline for returning to full-time instruction? A compliant partial day plan must include documented goals and a projected date for the student to resume a full school day. "We'll see how it goes" is not a timeline.

3. Has the school documented what alternative supports are being provided at home during the missed hours? If your child is home for two hours each morning and receiving no educational programming or materials, this is exclusion — not a modified learning arrangement.

4. Has the plan been in place for more than a few weeks without formal review? Extended partial day arrangements that have never been formally reviewed or updated in the PLP are almost certainly not compliant.

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you have grounds to formally challenge the arrangement.

How to Formally Refuse or Challenge a Partial Day Plan

You do not have to accept a partial day plan. Here is the process:

Step 1: Respond in writing immediately. Do not engage verbally only. Send an email to the EST-Resource and the school principal stating that you do not consent to the partial day arrangement and that you require the educational rationale, the PLP documentation, and the projected return timeline in writing within five business days.

Step 2: Request an emergency ESS Team meeting. State in writing that you are requesting an immediate ESS Team meeting to review your child's PLP, with particular focus on the supports that must be in place for your child to attend school for the full instructional day.

Step 3: Reference the law. Your written communication should cite Policy 323 specifically, noting that partial day arrangements are a last-resort strategy requiring documented justification and a return timeline. If the current arrangement does not meet these requirements, state that plainly.

Step 4: Escalate if the school does not respond. If you do not receive a meaningful written response within a reasonable timeframe (five to ten business days), escalate in writing to the District Superintendent. State that the school is implementing an unauthorized partial day exclusion in violation of Policy 323 and the student's rights under the NB Education Act and Human Rights Act.

Step 5: Contact the CYSA. The Office of the Child, Youth and Senior Advocate has been particularly active on this issue. Their office can investigate and compel the department to respond. Filing a CYSA complaint costs nothing and sends an immediate signal to the district that the situation is being monitored externally.

What to Do About Lost Income and Financial Harm

One of the most devastating aspects of illegal partial day exclusions is the financial impact on families. A parent who must leave work multiple times a week to retrieve their child — with no end date in sight — faces real income loss.

Document this harm from the start. Keep a log of every day your child was sent home early, the time you received the call, and any work arrangements you had to alter. This documentation becomes relevant if the situation escalates to a Human Rights Board of Inquiry, where the Commission has the authority to order financial compensation for harm suffered as a result of discrimination.

The New Brunswick Special Ed Advocacy Playbook includes a fill-in-the-blank letter template for formally declining a partial day plan — a document that cites Policy 323, the NB Education Act, and the duty to accommodate, and that demands written PLP documentation and a return timeline from the school.

For the full escalation roadmap — from ESS Team refusal through to the Human Rights Commission — the Playbook walks you through each step with the exact legal language NB school administrators are required to respond to.

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