Toronto District School Board (TDSB) will hold a special public meeting Wednesday, Sept. 25, one week after students attended a downtown rally for Indigenous rights, which ended up with some of them participating in a march and chanting pro-Palestinian slogans.
The rally and march on Sept. 18 was organized by the Grassy Narrows First Nation in northern Ontario, to raise awareness of the devastating effects mercury poisoning has had on the community.
Shortly after the march, videos appeared on social media showing students chanting “From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”
Banners reading ‘We won’t stop until Palestine is free’ and ‘From Wabigoon River [the contaminated river in northern Ontario] to the Dead Sea, we will all be free,’ were seen among the numerous signs that supported the Grassy Narrows Nation on videos of the march that went from Grange Park to the Ontario legislature at Queen’s Park.
The Toronto school board said it was investigating the incident. “TDSB received a number of concerns about this trip, in particular that issues outside of the main focus of the event were raised,” a statement from acting director of education Louise Sirisko said. “We apologize for the harm that some students may have experienced as a result.”
School trustee Shelley Laskin said in an email blast to parents sent Sunday night that she was “deeply upset and angered” by what she saw on social media. “Frankly, the reports of what children experienced before, during and after the River Run are deeply disturbing.”
Laskin said she did not know how many of the 15 schools at the event attended just the rally where members of the First Nations community spoke, and how many participated in the march to Queen’s Park.
“The procedures for excursions are crystal clear. It’s fairly obvious if you watch social media that not all the guidelines that were set out in those protocols were followed,” Laskin said in an interview with The CJN.
“That chant certainly compromised, from my perspective, the sense of belonging for all students in our system. If there was harm to one child in our care, parents have a right to be concerned and to seek answers.”
Laskin said in her email blast that the permission forms sent to parents indicated that students would only observe. “The ones shared with me said that students would observe—there was no information they would participate.”
“When things like this happen, it further diminishes the trust,” in public education, said the long-time trustee.
“I believe for some it was a true educational experience, tied to the curriculum. We just need the facts and most importantly, if we need to strengthen the policy (on field trips), then we will do that.
Different parents were told different things about the rally by school board officials, before it even occurred, said Tamara Gottlieb, a founding member of Jewish Educators and Families Association of Canada (JEFA).
“At no point did parents receive the type of disclosure that the ministry has promised parents,” Gottlieb said. That disclosure includes biographies of the speakers and details about their speeches, two weeks before an event.
“Parents had concerns on many levels, from safety to indoctrination. Parents wrote repeatedly to the board and to school leadership asking for the field trip to be cancelled and the response from school leadership, in writing, was that the students would only observe and not participate,” Gottlieb said.
The rally raises questions about what discipline teachers and board staff will face, if any.
“Where is the Ontario College of Teachers? They have a statutory requirement to regulate the teaching profession in the public interest. Clearly public confidence has eroded and we haven’t heard from the organization at all.
“An incident like this really jeopardizes the future of self-regulation for the teaching profession and the Ontario College of Teachers needs to act quickly to investigate all the teachers involved.”
The minister of education needs to be prepared to step in, judging by the number of staff involved in the decision-making, Gottlieb said.
The province has taken over supervision of a school board previously: In 2020, the ministry assumed supervision for the Peel Region School Board, just west of Toronto, for two-and-a-half years, over its lack of action countering anti-Black racism, and discrimination against other minorities.
Jill Dunlop, the newly appointed minister of education, did not initially answer a question from The CJN about whether the province would take that step in Toronto—but she announced the following day that her office has initiated an investigation.
In her initial statement about the incident, Dunlop said, “Our government firmly believes that publicly funded schools and activities should never be used as vehicles for political protests… Some teachers, along with others associated with this protest, have a history of promoting inflammatory, discriminatory, and hateful content. There is no place for this type of teaching in our classrooms. I expect the TDSB’s investigation to be thorough, transparent, and to conclude as quickly as possible.”
In June, the TDSB added anti-Palestinian racism to a staff report on a strategy for combatting hate and racism. A motion to add anti-Israeli racism was not approved by trustees.
No definition was provided for anti-Palestinian racism, which has proven problematic in this situation, Laskin said.
“Even questioning the excursion policy—and what actually happened there—I have been sent emails accusing us of anti-Palestinian racism. Frankly, as a Jew, I support Palestinian rights.”
