Time to change Peel school board leadership
To be fair to the Peel District School Board, I doubt there’s a major institution in Canada that would survive this level of scrutiny of their anti-Black racism policies.
To be fair to the Peel District School Board students, it’s past time that the board’s director of education, the chair and vice-chair of the board of trustees and anyone who enabled them be sent packing. But only the director can be sacked; the trustees are elected.
Yet another scathing report released Monday that led to the minister of education issuing an ultimatum gave the board’s leadership a capital F Fail grade. Black communities have long testified in meetings, in letters, in studies, in reviews, in the media that on the issue of anti-Black racism at least, its senior-most staff is incompetent and insulting.
Consider some of the phrases that jump out of the 27-page report by investigator Arleen Huggins, who was called in to investigate if the board was complying with the ministry’s binding directions: “failed to comply”; “failure to fully review”; “failing to answer”; “failed to see”; “failed to explain”; “failed to secure consensus”; “failure to fully understand the findings of the report”; “failure to provide leadership.”
In a statement Monday, director Peter Joshua and chair Brad MacDonald said, “While our commitment to undertake anti-Black racism work today is real, we acknowledge there is reason for skepticism and mistrust sowed by years of inaction. As educators, we know you expect and deserve better from us.”
How many such statements should the community hear before they see action? A previous apology from the board said, “We must do all we can to eliminate the marginalization experienced by Black students and staff in Peel schools.” A statement prior to that said, “We have much to do to continue the remedial work necessary to seek reconciliation.” But Huggins report didn’t find any evidence of trust-building measures. Yet another statement before that said “apologies mean nothing if we don’t take action to address and correct systemic issues.” Words, words, words. The board has come under the microscope because of the stubborn resistance by Black community members and three women on the board: trustees Kathy McDonald and Nokha Dakroub, and associate director of equity Poleen Grewal.
The dysfunction among Peel board trustees has played out publicly. This report, mandated by Ontario’s minister of education on April 27, offers details about another office in a shambles, roiling the board, but away from the public gaze.
At issue is the relationship between Peter Joshua, the director of education, and Grewal, the equity chief.
Grewal filed a human rights complaint against the board and Joshua in March 2019 alleging racism, harassment and reprisals that involved her young son who went to school in the same board. The root of her complaint, which is still outstanding, was the board “silencing and diminishing” her work while not dealing with anti-Black racism in schools. The board denied the allegations and framed the issue as one of a clash of leadership styles.
A Peel board staffer had told me on condition of anonymity that Joshua “goes to the We Rise Together Community meetings, comes back, laughs and mocks them.” We Rise Together is an action plan to support Black students.
When I put that to Joshua in October he said, “I unequivocally reject the suggestion that I was anything but respectful and supportive of the board’s anti-Black racism work.”
In this latest report, Huggins echoed Grewal’s statement that anti-Black racism was the source of disagreement.
“I also heard concerns that while there is willingness to talk about marginalized communities, senior leadership have an issue with anti-Black racism in particular and ‘get their backs up,’” she writes.
The report slams Joshua’s competence on multiple fronts.
It portrays a leader unwilling to engage with trustees on important questions that impact Black children because he viewed being asked about it as “being put on the spot.” One such question was around a pilot project to stop streaming students into pathways toward or away from university — a practice that has been found discriminatory.
Joshua failed to ask his staff to respond to the equally important question by trustee Kathy McDonald of what to do with the records of students who have been expelled or suspended, a failure Huggins calls “troublesome.”
What about the equity team that Joshua said would help implement anti-racism initiatives system-wide? The report says Joshua “was not able to speak to the specific expertise, experience or credentials of any member of the Equity Committee.”
It’s also a committee bereft of a leader. Grewal is on a leave of absence. The board is looking to hire a superintendent of equity who would report to her.
The report says Joshua categorized his relationship with Grewal as “professional,” one in which he accommodated her requests. Yet, the report found, when Grewal specifically asked to be provided with a draft of the posting for the superintendent of equity, Joshua told her she would see it when it was posted online.
That there is tension in the director’s office is well-known. The two-monthold ministry review mentions it, the Star has detailed the human rights claims, Black community members repeatedly referenced it and voiced support for Grewal at public board meetings, where they were shut down and asked not to get into personnel issues.
Yet the board of trustees vice-chair David Green told Huggins he was unaware of these tensions, indeed he was “shocked and surprised” to learn there was “stuff going on there.” Chair Brad MacDonald told Huggins it was irrelevant why there was tension in the office. Huggins calls this indifference “significant” given the work the ministry was asking the board to undertake needed a strong relationship between the director and the equity team.
The report also puts the spotlight on the relationship between trustees — usually split 10 against two, with the two trustees Kathy McDonald and Nokha Dakroub being the ones who, Huggins notes, “have been vocal advocates for equity and human rights issues and who have been engaging with the PDSB’s Black and other equityseeking communities.”
The trustees’ chair and vice-chair didn’t see the two trustees that way. For instance, they assumed that McDonald and Dakroub walked away from a ministry-mandated mediation between warring factions because of their “personal destructive agendas.” In the same vein, the board sees the community as “interfering and disruptive,” the report said, which it labelled “extremely troubling.”
A breathtaking moment in an already shocker of a report is buried on page 18.
Chair Brad MacDonald thought it fit to tell Huggins the “community has been after us,” and that “it is against our human rights to force us to apologize.”
To quote Huggins: “The board is ... incapable of providing good governance.”