Proving that school trustees often use the school board as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, the chair of the Toronto District School Board has decided to throw her hat into the ring in the upcoming byelection for a Toronto city council seat.
Six-year trustee Rachel Chernos Lin, also the chair of the TDSB for the past two years, bailed a few days ago after writing a formal letter to outgoing education director Colleen Russell-Rawlins requesting a leave without pay until the November byelection.
She is vying for the Don Valley West seat vacated by Jaye Robinson, who sadly passed away from cancer a few months ago.
She says in the letter, obtained by True North, that four superintendents and two trustees – including her leftist pal on the board Shelley Laskin – will oversee “any issues that may require guidance and advocacy.”
That sounds like a recipe for chaos.
She adds that Marxist trustee Neethan Shan, the only would-be politician I know of to go downmarket from city councillor to trustee, will take over as chair.
With that, she appears to have made a hasty retreat, signing up to run while surrounded by past-her-due-date councillor and former head of the Manitoba Communist party Paula Fletcher and grossly past-his-due-date councillor Mike Colle.
Her election website was also a go by that day.
Chernos-Lin did not respond to requests for comment.
It’s hard to say whether the TDSB is better off with her or without her.
I can certainly say that the leftist’s incompetence and her inability to hold anyone accountable while chairman will fit right in at the City Hall circus under Mayor Olivia Chow.
She will also be right on brand with council’s refusal to acknowledge and deal with the tide of antisemitism in the city – seeing as she, even though Jewish, has refused to take a strong stand against the same Jew hatred in TDSB schools.
An umbrella group of concerned parents operating as SOSTDSB said under her stewardship, the TDSB has become “awash in DEI ideology and has thrown excellence and merit out the window.”
That’s for darn sure.
Instead of acting like a check and balance for the administration, she has presided over a board that believes itself to be cheerleaders for Russell-Rawlins and her reign of terror.
Chernos-Lin has not uttered a peep about a so-called review into the tragic suicide of Richard Bilkzsto, who killed himself after being harassed and bullied by a DEI consultant who was the pick of Russell-Rawlins.
Since she’ll be gone until November: one has no clue whether the review will be completed before the education director leaves the board this fall.
She and most all of her trustees have permitted Russell-Rawlins to dumb down the curriculum, to put teachers and administrators on leave who don’t swallow the anti-black racism Kool-Aid, and to remove any and all consequences for those who bring knives and guns to school. She has done nothing to tackle the serious rise in absenteeism and the dereliction of duties by teachers who have experienced a serious decline in morale.
I’ve lost count of how often Chernos-Lin and her cabal of Mean Girls – most notably Shelley Laskin – rule out of order the one trustee who has tried to push accountability.
I’m referring to heroic Willowdale trustee Weidong Pei.
The twosome have gone out of their way, in fact, to protect Russell-Rawlins and her DEI sycophants by repeatedly trying to silence Pei.
It is appalling to me and to many others who demand accountability that such an incompetent politician would think she has what it takes to be a councillor.
But I guess if Chow can be mayor, any incompetent will do.
The only thing she has going for her is name recognition in Don Valley West.
Otherwise she will add nothing to the current council except to be a sure vote for whacky leftist ideas that have already led to the decline of the city.
