A North Vancouver father is hoping to appeal his case against the North Vancouver school district and the Ministry of Education to the Supreme Court of Canada after losing his latest legal fight over whether the school district did enough to help his son -- who has dyslexia -- when he was an elementary school student.

Frances Kelly, lawyer for Rick Moore, said she will ask the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal after a 2-1 decision by the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected Moore's claim that the school district and the province discriminated against his son Jeffrey by not doing enough to help accommodate his disability.

Moore said for the sake of many other learning disabled students, he's hopeful the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case, even though his own son has long since graduated and become an independent adult.

"It's always been about the other kids. It's never been just about Jeff," said Moore.

Moore pointed to promises made by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell in his recent TV speech to identify and provide help for young children who have trouble reading as "exactly what we're asking for."

"It would be totally ironic that he makes that promise and then leaves," said Moore.

Yude Heneleff, a lawyer who acted for the Learning Disabilities Association in Canada as an intervenor in the case, said Moore's case is extremely important for students with learning disabilities across Canada.

At the heart of the case is what responsibility the school system bears to help special needs children succeed. "It's a very important systemic issue," said Heneleff.

The recent decision marks the latest chapter in a 13-year struggle for the Moores, who won a victory from B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in 2005. In that decision, the tribunal concluded the North Vancouver school district and the province were guilty of discrimination by not doing enough to help Jeff Moore with his dyslexia.

But the province appealed, and a later B.C. Supreme Court ruling by Justice Janice Dillon in 2008 reversed the decision, concluding that neither the local school nor the provincial Ministry of Education could be faulted for the way they tried to help Moore when he was a student in the early 1990s.

As a young child, Moore struggled for several years while attending North Vancouver's Braemar elementary. At the time, the North Vancouver school district had recently closed a special program that previously offered intensive remediation to students with learning disabilities.

Eventually, his parents pulled him out of the public school system, hired tutors and put him in Kenneth Gordon school, a private school that specializes in helping students with learning disabilities.

While Moore's dyslexia dramatically improved after he was placed in the expensive private school, the judge ruled the school district had done what it could to provide help for Moore.

In a split decision Oct. 29, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld that decision, with Justice Richard Low and Justice Mary Saunders concluding the school district had taken reasonable steps to identify Jeffrey Moore's learning disability and address his needs. Those judges said efforts to help Moore "cannot be measured against a standard of perfection."

The dissenting justice, Ann Rowles, didn't agree, writing that the school district should have done more to see that Jeffrey was able to get the benefit of a public education that all students are entitled to. She said human rights laws "require not merely that the complainant be accorded some accommodation, but that the accommodation provided be sufficient to allow meaningful access to the benefit in question."

Moore said the dissenting judge's comments give him hope that the issue will be important enough to be heard by Canada's top court. He added he doesn't think it's too much to ask the school system to teach a child to read.