Ontario Principals’ Council is not willing to hear parents out! Parents of Black children take a stand!

BY PAUL JUNOR

There are still many details that remain to be discovered regarding the troubling allegations against the: principal, vice-principal and teacher that locked a six-year-old Black boy in a school closet. The Toronto District  School Board has launched a formal investigation into the allegations of anti-Black racism at John Fisher Junior Public School while the administrators and teachers have been placed on home assignment.

Details were shared regarding the room that the boy was locked in, a picture was taken of the room and in it is a desk that a child could sit at, a microphone stand and a rack of audio-visual equipment. Charline Grant, one of the co–founders of the PoBC stated, “I went into the room and I locked the door’ cause I wanted to have a feel of how tiny it is. I can’t even stretch my arms out, that’s how tiny it is. For me, it feels and looks like imprisonment, solitary confinement, and it’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

Grant met the principal of the school and he shared with her that he did not believe the boy’s recollections of what happened. The principal reports that the boy was asked to sit at the desk after it was removed from the room, and not in the closet. Faridah also alleges that her son (who is the only Black boy in the grade one class) was forced to sit alone in a corner of the classroom away from his classmates, because he was distracting other students.

The Ontario Principals’ Council (OPC) released a statement on March 8^th, 2023. Part of the statement reads, “We are confident that once this incident is thoroughly investigated, the evidence will show that the student in question was never placed in the room depicted in the media reports, let alone with a closed or locked door.”

On Wednesday, March 29^th, PoBC sent an email to its members to update them with respect to its communication with the OPC. OPC sent PoBC a letter on February 7^th, 2023 requesting a meeting with them.

Words such as, “berating,” “aggressive” and “threatening” were used in the letter by OPC to PoBC. PoBC responded that “We would welcome the opportunity to meet with the OPC’s leadership team.”

In correspondence on Tuesday, February 7^th, 2023, both PoBC and OPC mutually agreed on Thursday, February 16^th, 2023, to meet within a month. OPC sent a second email that indicates that it expects that there would be “respect,” “civility” and “dignity” at the meeting scheduled for March 27^th, 2023. After a letter was sent to OPC by PoBC the OPC opted to cancel the meeting 54 minutes before it was set to occur.

In its response to the cancelled meeting, PoBC states in the email, “The OPC has made it clear through the cancellation of this meeting that centring the well-being of Black children within schools run by their membership is not a priority. The letters drafted by OPC and sent to a Black-led organization indicate a lack of understanding of the impacts of anti-Black racism and the way in which equity work needs to be carried out to create systemic change. They also indicate a lack of compassion for the children who are traumatized by racial violence within education at the hands of educators.”

I emailed OPC on Monday, April 3^rd, 2023, requesting an interview. I received a response from Peggy Sweeny on Wednesday, April 5^th, which stated, “We will not be participating in any media interviews about this situation beyond the public statement we released on March 8^th, 2023.”