Canada’s largest school board will begin the new school year absolutely rudderless.
The board’s chairman – Rachel Chernos Lin – is on leave until November to run for a vacant seat on city council.
She has left behind leftist Neethan Shan to steer the ship. Shan, who has made a profession of running for local office, was on Toronto city council for a brief 1.5 years where he contributed nothing to the debate.
He’s been a TDSB trustee for two years.
The controversial education director – black activist Colleen Russell-Rawlins – is on her way out the door by November.
She said she’s retiring but I will forever wonder whether she was pushed out for trying — and in several cases succeeding — to turn the school board into her DEI science experiment.
At a TDSB board meeting this past Wednesday, she informed everyone it was her last meeting. Speculation is that she’s taking holidays after, of course, having the summer off.
At that meeting, the board approved the hiring of the Phelps Group at $67,500 to select the new candidate and conduct a six-month “onboarding coaching program” for whomever is selected.
Meanwhile, trustee Weidong Pei says it hasn’t been decided who will act on an interim basis or whether there will be rotating directors monthly.
But that’s not all.
Instead of having a tough education minister providing ongoing oversight to this dysfunctional board, the province is now on its third minister in three months.
In early June, Todd Smith was installed as minister when Stephen Lecce was shuffled out of the job. Smith was barely in the job for two months before he announced his departure to the private sector.
Jill Dunlop, former colleges and universities minister, has been in the job just a few weeks, barely time to get up to speed on any school board or policy let alone the TDSB—although she did reinforce the province’s cellphone ban in Ontario classrooms earlier in the week.
Still, it will take some time to undo the damage done by the departing education director— if that ever happens considering the mindless woke trustees on the board.
Between installing like-minded sycophants on her executive team — many selected for the colour of their skin instead of competence — dumbing down the curriculum and creating a lottery system for entry to specialized programs (instead of basing selection on merit) Russell-Rawlins has turned the board into a DEI nightmare.
Black students have been given preferential treatment with mentorships and events curated just for them.
A freedom of information request done by True North shows the education director’s prints are all over the sole-sourced hiring of Kike Ojo-Thompson for DEI sessions. An FOI found that the board paid $115,000 to Ojo-Thompson just for 18 months between 2020 and 2021.
Ojo-Thompson was the equity trainer who harassed and bullied much-loved former principal Richard Bilkzsto during two of those sessions in the spring of 2021.
Tragically Bilkzsto committed suicide last summer — the result of what appears to be the abuse he took at those sessions together with the treatment by Russell-Rawlins’ anti-black racism lieutenants, who cancelled his contracts and sidelined him.
One year later there has been no word on the review announced by the outgoing director in the wake of his death. She likely will slip out the door not having to account for her actions.
There’s not been any word either from the education ministry which launched its own review a year ago.
A spokesman for Save our Schools TDSB (SOSTDSB) says they will continue to press for answers about the review.
Under the departing director, there has been a tremendous weakening of consequences for bad behaviour. Suspensions are rarely meted out and expulsions almost never — leading to the sanctioning of violence, vaping and the use of drugs within TDSB schools.
Russell-Rawlins and her anti-black racism sycophants have also turned a blind eye to the rampant anti-Semitism in schools. Shockingly the Jew hatred is not just perpetuated by students but by some teachers, administrators and certain trustees as well.
Meanwhile the anti-Semitic union members are diligently working to push anti-Palestinian racism policies this fall. As a spokesman for SOSTDSB says, there is “no data or evidence that this is even an issue” and could lead to an even bigger spike in Jew hatred.
Even the cellphone ban — which comes into place on the first day of school — will be hard to implement given the lack of consequences for bad behaviour at the board.
The ban prevents K-6 students from having their phones in class. Grades 7-12 students can keep their phones but they must be put away and kept on silent.
I suspect many teachers will have a difficult time administering this, especially with visible minority students for fear they will be reported for being racist.
Such is the culture at the board.
But there is some hope in the form of diligent trustee Pei who keeps trying to push for accountability at the board.
He is often outnumbered by the woke mindless trustees who try to cancel him.
He keeps on fighting.
Parents too, are starting to wake up and fight back.
With any hope, the new minister Dunlop will pay more attention to the unravelling of Canada’s largest school board.
The students deserve it.
They are in school to learn not to be the subject of an inherently racist anti-black racism ideology.
