By
Neil Armstrong
 |
| Photo contributed Arleen Huggins, lawyer and human rights advocate, was appointed by Minister of Education Stephen Lecce to investigate the Peel District School Board's capacity to comply with the 27 directions he issued after a review report of the board. |
Several community groups and their supporters in Brampton
will march tomorrow (June 17) to highlight the Peel District School Board’s
inability to address anti-Black racism.
The march, which begins at 4:30 p.m. at the Brampton Court
House, will culminate at the board’s head office in Mississauga, Ontario.
For many years, parents of Black
children in Ontario’s second largest school district have been calling for action
to be taken by the board to confront anti-Black racism and systemic inequities.
Now, these community groups are demanding that the director
of education be fired by the board, and that the chair and vice-chair resign
from their positions. Last Friday, the National Council of Canadian Muslims made
a similar demand for the chair and director to resign.
The Black community refuses to work with the current board,
notes a media release from the organizers.
Their demand comes after
education minister Stephen Lecce’s recent release of an investigator’s report
on the PDSB.
Arleen Huggins, a lawyer and
human rights advocate, was appointed in April by Lecce to investigate the
PDSB’s capacity to comply with directions he issued after a review he initiated
to examine allegations of racism and leadership and governance dysfunction at
the board.
The
three-member review team conducted an extensive consultation between December
2019 and February 2020 and based on its report the minister issued 27 binding
directions to the PDSB in March.
Huggins
concluded her report noting that, “the PDSB does not have the ability to
provide good governance or to effectively carry out its responsibilities to
oversee and ensure proper compliance with the directions.”
Lecce said he is determined to
“confront all forms of racism, discrimination, and hate, against all minority
communities in our province.”
“For too long, too many kids
have been left behind due to systemic frameworks that perpetuate racism. This
is unacceptable and must change.”
The minister said Huggins report
reveals the need for real change within the board and provides a necessary
component to ensuring these issues are addressed immediately and effectively.
“As outlined in the Education
Act, I am required to provide a final opportunity for compliance from the
Board. My expectation is clear: the Board must change, or I will take further
action. We cannot and will not sit idle, while families and students continue
to feel isolated, victimized, and targeted.
“It is clear that we
must continue our work to confront racism - specifically anti-Black racism -
within our schools across the province.”
The
minister has given the board until June 22 to provide him with a plan to
address the key findings in Huggins’ report.
“Arleen Huggins’ review report has highlighted the inability
of the board to fix the issues plaguing it,” says Idris Orughu, one of the
organizers of the march.
“The report says the PDSB lacks the capacity to provide good
governance in the interest of all students.”
Wednesday’s peaceful March for Justice, also focuses on the
systemic issues of anti-Black racism in the school system in Ontario, mandate
that the Ford government amend the school act and pass legislation that will
strengthen and penalize violators of the act, said the organizers.
Orughu said the march is open to everybody who supported the
letter to the ministry asking that the board’s ban against him be rescinded and
that the PDSB director be fired and the chair and vice-chair resign their
positions.
He said the board has shown that it cannot meet Minister
Lecce’s directives and “as such because of the problem three other members
decided not to work with the board because they don’t truly believe that the
board is agreeable to the arrangement.”
Many parents in Peel have complained
about systemic racism at the board, and on June13 at least 15 Black
organizations stood together at Old City Hall in Toronto to demand action on
dismantling anti-Black racism and discrimination in institutions and
systems. They cited various reports done over the last 25 years, including
the PDSB review.
Meanwhile, in a joint statement
the PDSB’s chair Brad MacDonald and director of education Peter Joshua said
they would meet the minister’s June 22 requirement.
“While our commitment to undertake
anti-Black racism work today is real, we acknowledge there is reason for
scepticism and mistrust sowed by years of inaction. As educators, we know you
expect and deserve better from us.”
They said the Black community in the PDSB, and colleagues and students
have been telling them for decades that anti-Black racism is part of their
daily lived experiences.
To date, as a school board, we
have not been successful in eradicating anti-Black racism, MacDonald and Joshua
said.
In her report, Huggins said the Review of the Peel District
School Board by Ena Chadha, Suzanne Herbert and Shawn Richard clearly
documented that the relationship between the PDSB and its communities, and
Black communities in particular, is one of distrust, disenfranchisement,
disrespect and frustration.
“In that context, therefore, it is extremely troubling to
not only see little evidence of efforts to rebuild trust with its communities,
but to see a continued approach of viewing community as interfering and
disruptive,” Huggins notes in her investigator’s report.
Huggins said this adversarial approach to Black
communities prevents the board from seeking and seizing opportunities to
rebuild trust and repair damaged relationships.
“I note that the apology letter that the
Board was required to consider under Direction 13 was a significantly
contentious exercise, and three and a half hours of discussion failed to secure
consensus on the content of that letter. The Chair’s observation to me that the
“community has been after us” and that “it is against our human rights to force
us to apologize” provides some explanation as to the process and outcome of the
Board’s response to Direction 13. The debate that took place as to the whether
the Board would commit to anti-Black racism training, as advocated by the two
Trustees, rather than only anti-bias training in an apology letter directed at
Black communities is a troubling indication of the Board’s failure to fully
understand the findings of the Report, their responsibility to address those
findings, and the need to acknowledge and act on the spirit of the Directions.
“As well, even in hindsight, after the
negative and vocal response received from Black communities to the Board's
apology letter, there was still an utter lack of insight by the Chair shown
during his interview as to the significance of the decision to include no
reference to anti-Black racism training,” Huggins wrote.
Orughu said the community cannot continue to
work with a board that refuses to apologize when the chair said he is being
forced to apologize and that it is against his human rights.
In her findings, Huggins notes that the prevailing question
throughout the course of the investigation has been: “does this Board and the
Director’s Office have the ability and capacity to provide good governance to
address the issues raised in the Report and to carry out its responsibilities
to implement and oversee the implementation of the Minister’s binding
Directions?”
“The Board has been directed to implement major initiatives
to address systemic anti-Black racism. System-wide transformational change of
this nature requires strong leadership and the capacity to establish a clear
vision that the entire system is inspired to fulfill. A reimagined vision for
the PDSB requires a deep understanding of the issues raised in the Report, and
bold leadership to inspire and lead the system forward.
“I have determined that the collective Board
and the Director’s Office is lacking both the ability and capacity, and perhaps
even more importantly, the will, to address the findings in the Report, and
therefore future non-compliance with the Minister’s binding Directions is
probable,” she said.
In writing her conclusion, Huggins enumerated
seven specific findings which included that the board is dysfunctional and,
with no prospect of successful mediation, is incapable of providing good
governance.
“A divided Board cannot provide either the
vision or leadership that is required to successfully implement the
governance-related Directions that the board has assumed responsibility for,
nor can it provide the appropriate oversight of the Directions that fall under
the responsibility of the Director of Education.”
She also found that the board “has not
demonstrated a willingness to engage in the critical discussions on the
substance of the Report, the intention of the Directions, or consider the
Directions in a manner other than formal compliance.”
“The board still, after the Review Report and
the Directions, has a misunderstanding of anti-Black racism. Further, there is
no evidence that the board has a willingness to engage in the necessary work to
gain such an understanding, nor does the board understand the urgency of the
need to do so,” she said.
The
investigator found that the board has “failed to understand that its mandate
includes engagement with communities, and that respectful, collaborative
relationships with communities- particularly Black communities- are essential
to fulfilling the Directions and moving the PDSB out of its current crisis of
non-confidence.”
Huggins
said the director of education “has not demonstrated the necessary capacity to
lead the implementation of the binding Directions. There is no evidence of
urgent and decisive leadership to address the findings in the Report and take
the actions necessary to implement the Directions.”
Her
report found that “the dysfunction in the Director’s Office remains unaddressed
and I have seen no evidence of a plan to resolve the issues underlying the
dysfunction. With no prospect for successful mediation, the senior leadership
is divided. This dysfunction has, and will, adversely impact the ability to
successfully and fully comply with the Directions.”
The
lawyer and human rights advocate also found that “staffing at the senior
leadership level is impacting on the timing and the quality of responses to the
Minister’s binding Directions. Continued limited and unsatisfactory responses
and non-compliance are probable outcomes.”
The Review of the Peel District School Board report
indicates that diversity of the PDSB community is one of its greatest assets.
It notes that across 257 schools in Brampton, Mississauga,
and Caledon, the PDSB’s 155,000 students represent a rich array of racial,
ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds and sexual orientations.
According to recent PDSB student census data,
approximately 83% percent of PDSB secondary school students are racialized and
more than 6.5% of secondary school students self-identify with multiple racial
backgrounds. Secondary students identify with more than 160 ethnic and cultural
backgrounds, and 110 languages are spoken in the homes of secondary students.
Just under 10% of secondary students self-identify as 2SLGBTQ+.
Graphs also demonstrate the “absence of demographic
diversity amongst school staff and overrepresentation of white teachers at the
PDSB, a significant problem that manifests across various school boards in the
province. The 2016 PDSB employee census data indicates that approximately 25%
of PDSB staff are racialized, which is almost the opposite of the demographics
of the student body,” it noted.
Meanwhile,
Orough says that in light of what is happening globally, particularly in the
United States where Black people have been out fighting against systemic
racism, anti-Black racism, and discrimination in all forms, this march falls
into everything that the Black community in Peel has been talking about.
He
said COVID-19 put a pause on everything they were doing which explained the reason
they never came out together when the initial review report was released.
The
police killing of George Floyd demonstrated anti-Black systemic racism and
Orough thinks this is an opportune time to highlight these issues when people
are protesting worldwide.
“We
are trying to highlight for those who have not been aware of what has been
happening with the Peel District School Board, we’re trying to let them know
that this thing is happening in your own backyard, let’s pay attention.”
Orough
said the lives of young Black children have been destroyed and the course of
their future has been changed by a school system that refuses to recognize the
equality of Black children.
He
is urging all people who are concerned about humanity and about the lives of
young Black children that cannot defend themselves to come out and protest
against the continuous degradation of Black children by the Peel District
School Board tomorrow.
Organizers encourage those interested in marching to wear a
mask and to travel with hand sanitizer and a sign.
