Ottawa’s woke public school trustees proved yet again at a meeting this week that they’d rather stick to their ideology than protect students.
Faced with a motion by Donna Blackburn — one of the few rational trustees on the Ottawa Region District School Board — to reexamine the presence of police in schools, they twisted themselves into pretzels to avoid even discussing the idea.
Blackburn’s motion — seemingly carefully crafted to avoid political backlash — recommended that the board’s education director start discussions with the Ottawa Police Service to establish practice standards to allow for police support in schools where they could assist with the safety and security of students and staff.
Media reports cite increasing violence and bullying in the board’s schools and describe administrators who attempt to bury the incidents under the rug.
It was Blackburn’s second attempt to raise the idea of re-examining police involvement in schools after the board opted in June 2021 to end the well-respected School Resource Officer (SRO) program in its schools.
But led by trustee Amanda Presley, a previous shop steward for Teamsters Local 91 and a self-described environmental and social justice advocate, the woke trustees ensured the motion wasn’t even discussed.
Sounding very much as if the strategy to cancel Blackburn’s motion was crafted prior to the meeting, Presley listed a series of bylaws and policies she claimed showed the motion “contravened previous decisions.”
Using that logic, that would suggest with this woke crowd; nothing can be reversed or rescinded unless they approve.
Presley quickly raised the real reason they were putting a stop to any discussion.
“I believe the motion will cause harm to the communities we are entrusted to protect,” she said, not elaborating which communities she meant.
One can assume she was referring to racialized students and not anyone else.
Meeting chair, Justine Bell, who works as a senior advisor on global poverty education with the federal government, appeared only too happy to put a stop to any debate or consideration of the motion.
Blackburn was not permitted to speak, only to challenge the chair’s decision, which lost.
Board chairman Lyra Evans and controversial trustee Nili Kaplan-Myrth – who was difficult to understand from behind her mask – were uncharacteristically silent on the issue. That suggested a plan to bury the motion in procedural wrangling had been already determined as their strategy.
Their tactics were given oxygen at the outset of the meeting by a series of activists who claimed police in schools have a “traumatic effect” on the well-being of racialized students and that police continue to “harm” black students.
One activist, Mae Mason, who did not appear on camera, claimed police impact on the ability of queer, Indigenous and racialized students to learn.
There is no logic to the claims of the activists and the trustees.
All they do with their rhetoric is further enable a culture of permissiveness for groups they consider oppressed and ignore the safety concerns of the vast majority of students.
I suggest that those who claim to feel ”harm” by any police presence may have good reason to be intimidated. Perhaps they are perpetuating violence or engaging in bullying.
Reached after the meeting, Blackburn said she was “very disappointed” that her colleagues did not want to discuss the issue of police in schools.
“The cancellation of the SRO program has had some negative impacts in regards to student and staff safety,” she said. “I would have thought the board would want to talk about that.”
She vowed to continue to monitor the issue and to repeatedly bring it up under new business.
“Whether trustees like it or not the police are in our schools everyday,” she said. “We had an opportunity as a board to recognize the important relationship and we didn’t take it.”
