Peel District School Board under the microscope: troubling allegations cast doubts on progress

BY PAUL JUNOR

On Thursday, November 7^th, the Ministry of Education announced that it was launching an immediate review of one of Canada’s largest school boards. In his statement as quoted by Shree Paradkar in the November 8^th Toronto Star, “Allegations related to equity in the Peel District School Board have raised concerns, specifically related to anti-black racism and lack of adherence to governance, leadership, and human practices.”

These are troubling allegations, which did not arise over night. It seems that there were other issues that were festering at the PDSB that triggered the ministry’s review. It appears that there were concerns raised by families, students, the board’s director of education, the board of trustees and community members that were the impetus for this review. In a statement from the chair, Stan Cameron, and vice-chair Susan Lawton on behalf of the board, “We made a commitment to work on our governance and so we reached out to the Ministry of Education for support.” It appears that the actions of these trustees were not done with the blessing of the other trustees. There was no formal motion made to send this letter.

One of the incidents that have been reported in the media centred on the remarks that were made by trustee Davies at the October 10^th board meeting who referred to McCrimmon Public School, (which has a high number of racialized students) as “ McCriminal.” This racist remark by Davies did not elicit a response from vice-chair Lawton. The only suggestion was that those who feel that they had been subjected to racism should go to the integrity commissioner. This showed a lack of sensitivity on her part for which she later apologized at the next meeting after the Toronto Star reported on the incident. At that tumultuous meeting, many African-Canadian community members were not able to present formally. Three trustees including McDonald and Dakroub, raised objections to the request for presentations and their actions are now subject to investigations by the integrity commissioner.

In another troubling development, as was reported in the October 31^st edition of  the Toronto Star, Poleen Grewal  (Associate Director of  Instructional and Equity Support)  had taken the board and its director, Peter Joshua to the Human Rights Tribunal of  Ontario accusing them of racism, harassment and “silencing and diminishing,” her work while not  addressing anti-black racism in Peel schools. She filed her complaint on March 2019, in which she claims that the board infringed on her “right to be free from discrimination and harassment and created a poisonous work environment.”

In July, 2017 Joshua took over from Tony Pontes, and in the Sept 4^th edition of the Toronto Star he stated, “Teaching is very much about meeting students halfway through understanding and empathy. They need to identify, understand, minimize and eliminate the marginalization of experience as they rise. That includes Black, LGBTQ and Indigenous.”

Many people are wondering what will happen to initiatives that are currently in place to:  address inequity and marginalization of black male students, mandatory bias and anti-racism training of all staff, commitment to collecting race-based statistics and black youths leadership mentoring programs. The cancellation of the previously scheduled November 13^th board meeting has angered many, but it did not deter many committed community members from showing up.