Community Groups to March to Demand Change at the Peel District School Board

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.