It’s not the full takeover that the Toronto District School Board needs, but the Ford government is hiring a babysitter.
Education Minister Jill Dunlop has appointed Patrick Case, a former bureaucrat in the Ministry of Education, to review field trip policies at the TDSB.
Dunlop calls the review “a necessary step to address this pressing issue” to ensure that schools are a place for learning “not politics.” The move comes after more than a dozen TDSB schools participated in an antisemitic rally last month.
School officials at several elementary and middle schools had told parents that students would be observing a protest for clean water for the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Northern Ontario. Instead of simply observing, students became active participants as the protest turned from clean drinking water on a reserve to chants about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
An email from one teacher told students to wear blue T-shirts to the rally so they could be identified as occupiers, while Indigenous students were encouraged to wear traditional regalia. Stickers were handed out, including to Jewish students, with the phrase “Zionism kills” and the students were encouraged to wear them.
“From Turtle Island for Palestine, occupation is a crime,” the students were told to chant.
That chant, pushed on students as young as Grade 3, not only drags the war Hamas started into a rally that was supposed to be about clean water, it pushes a far-left ideology onto students. Students are told that they are colonial settlers, that they are occupiers, that they are criminals for living in Canada on Indigenous land.
This doesn’t have anything to do with Truth and Reconciliation, this is all about pushing cultural Marxism on students and indoctrinating them.
“The safety and well-being of students should always come first in our classrooms. Publicly funded schools should never be used as vehicles of political protest, ideology or discrimination,” Dunlop said in announcing that Case will review field trip policy for the TDSB.
“We have a responsibility to act when a school board fails to take appropriate action. Through this review, we are helping to ensure that schools across the province prioritize the health, safety and inclusion of all students and their learning environment.”
While this limited review is welcome news, quite frankly, the whole board should have been put under supervision.
Board Chair Rachel Chernos Lin is currently on leave to run in the municipal byelection in the Don Valley West ward. The environment that allowed this radicalism to infect TDSB has flourished under her watch — now would have been an appropriate time to remove her.
Let’s hope she fails in her bid for city council.
Similarly, Colleen Russell-Rawlins, the TDSB’s director of education, is retiring this month. She too has allowed this radicalism to take hold in the board under her watch.
There have also been financial problems at TDSB that have occurred under the watch of Russel-Rawlins and Chernos Lin, which adds to the need for full provincial supervision.
This review of the TDSB’s field trip policy will need to suffice for now and those concerned about the future of education need to hope that Case does a good job. There are warning signs to be concerned given the resume he brings with him, so Dunlop better have given clear direction.
Case was hired by the Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne in 2017 to serve as assistant deputy minister and chief equity officer. He did, however, spend several years working alongside the Ford government and former education minister Stephen Lecce in particular.
Many parents in the city’s Jewish community believe that antisemitism has seeped into the curriculum under the guise of the DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion programs the board has adopted.
If his review and report are to be taken seriously, Case will need to take factors like this into account.