Halton board reviewing Oakville school after complaints about discrimination

The Halton District School Board says it has received dozens of complaints from students about systemic discrimination they have faced at an Oakville high school.

And the board will be launching a third- party investigation into a highprofile incident, after a Grade12 student said marks she needed for a university application were “arbitrarily” lowered by the guidance counsellor.

Medina Jones’s story went viral on social media, after she posted in early October about how the guidance counsellor at Oakville Trafalgar High School sent her “predicted grades” to a university for her application — which wwere below what her recordw indicated she would likely achieve. She blames anti- Black racism.

Jones told the Star that when she qquestioned theqassessment, she was told the counsellor hadn’t spoken to any of her teachers. She said the counsellor told her that the grades were not up for negotiation.

To apply to the U.K., Jones required a letter from her school providing a set of predicted grades based on previous achievements and what she and her teachers expected she would achieve in courses this year.

Jones said after getting nowhere with the administration, she relayed her concerns in a post on Instagram.

The post racked up over 16,000 views, likes and comments by past and present students. Some of those students shared their own experiences of racism.

“When I saw the outpouring of responses, then I realized, this kind of thing is really resonating with a lot of people and there is a pattern with what this guidance department has done,” said Jones.

“This wasn’t done out of ignorance,” she said. “This process has been successfully done for students who are white. The people who are being impacted by this guidance department isn’t every student … it’s disproportionately Black, Indigenous and students of colour.” Her mother, Rowda Mohamud, said she reached out to the board’s principal of equity and inclusive education and eventually spoke with the school principal. Jones’s grades were changed.

“It was completely arbitrary. She didn’t even tell us what she did to change the marks,” said Mohamud. “I want to understand what these people actually did to generate the first set of grades and the second set of grades. I want to see what process they followed or didn’t follow. I am not happy that this simply got changed.”

The two then met the director of education, Stuart Miller, who confirmed to Mohamud that the board would be launching an independent third-party investigation.

“There will be an investigation into the issues you, Medina and others have raised around the systemic racism and in particular anti-black racism at OT (Oakville Trafalgar) and especially in the guidance dept,” he said an email to Mohamud.

In an email to the Star, spokesperson Marnie Denton said a staff person had been put on administrative leave, but said “any workplace investigations that may or may not be occurring are confidential.”

Mohamud suggested to the director that the school board send out a survey at the school to assess the extent of discrimination at the school.

Tina Salmini, superintendent of education, told a Star columnist last week that the board “felt it was necessary to provide an opportunity for students to express their concerns and for the board/school to respond accordingly based on the information provided.”

The survey, which was open to high school students for one week, got 34 responses. The school has more than 1,200 students.

“Students identified several areas of concern regarding student-student and student-staff interaction around the following topics: age, race, ethnicity, citizenship, gender identity/ gender expression, sexual orientation, religion/creed/spiritual affiliation,” said Denton.

Mohamud said those responses were probably the tip of the iceberg. She said the survey was poorly conducted as it required students to use their names and grades before filling it out.

“Parents have contacted me saying we didn’t fill out the survey because we didn’t feel safe putting our names and our kids’ names out there,” she said. “I think the 34 is very low.”

Denton said the intent of the survey was to “gather reports of potential discriminatory experiences by students and parents/guardians.” She said the information on the form was confidential, but identifying information was collected to “ensure the integrity of the data collection process so that the board’s response could be based on the highest quality data possible.”

The results were summarized in a group format so as to remove any identifying information to protect the privacy and anonymity of the respondents, she said.

Mohamud said the results have not been shared with the community.

Denton told the Star: “The responses collected will be used to inform decision making at the school and if needed, at the Board level.”

Shortly after Miller met Jones and Mahmoud, Miller tweeted about the incident, saying “although the specific incident that came to light this week has been resolved, the much larger issues both she and the comments illustrated have not yet been fully addressed. It is clear from the comments and sentiments expressed by her and the other Black and racialized students of the HDSB that there is much work for us to do to end anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism.”