By Sachin Maharaj, Stephanie Tuters and Vidya Shah
Recently there has been a resurgence of movements across North America resisting anti-racist reforms such as the use of critical race theory in schools.
These movements are often organized covertly, using social justice language and describing themselves as “anti-woke.”
Groups that oppose the teaching of critical race theory and 2SLGBTQ+ supports in schools often position themselves as truly or more accurately in favour of social justice by co-opting social justice language, alleging critical race theory discriminates against white people. School boards have been at the centre of these attacks.
As Ontario residents prepare to go to the polls in municipal elections on Oct. 24, CBC reports that “dozens of candidates are running on promises to roll back protections for transgender students, part of a concerted effort by conservative lobby groups to undo policies aimed at addressing systemic discrimination.”
Currently, school boards are bearing the brunt of backlash because their role in the public education system is the most accessible for members of the public to voice their concerns and try to have direct influence over policy and practice.
Sites of contestation
While school boards have always been sites of contestation, there has been a recent rise in hate directed at those in the system working towards social justice. This includes school board directors and teachers who have tried to enact anti-racist reforms in Ontario schools.
In Waterloo Region, the chairperson of the public district school board received death threats and hate mail after disallowing a now-retired teacher from presenting on books she felt weren’t age-appropriate that discussed asexuality and transgender identity.
In Chilliwack, B.C., a trustee received a message threatening to report her to the RCMP sex crimes unit after she argued against banning books with LGBTQ+ and anti-racist content.
This pushback against social justice work in schools is not new. Principals in Ontario have been experiencing it for years.
Political will of the public?
School trustees occupy a space between politics and administration. They represent the political will of the public but are supposed to leave the actual running of the school district to the director of education and other education professionals.
Under this dichotomy, politics and policy are the domain of the school board, whereas the director and other district staff have authority over administration. In practice, these boundaries are often blurred.
Part of what complicates matters is the governance structure of school boards. School trustees (elected school board members) are locally elected but are tasked with working “as one body representing the entire community.”
But given that they are each individually accountable to their constituents, some trustees prefer to take a hand-ons approach to addressing issues of local concern.
This complicates what might ordinarily be considered a “politics-administration dichotomy” — a divide that some researchers note is questionable and contentious.
Elected school boards in Canada
Elected school boards have a history in Canada that predates Confederation. The idea behind the creation of school boards was for civic leaders to gather and decide how best to educate the children of the local community.
Historically, boards governed relatively small geographic areas and only a handful of schools. For example, in 1969, Ontario had around 3,500 school boards.
In the 1960s, proponents of larger school systems argued that amalgamation would increase the financial resources of school boards which would allow for the hiring of specialized staff and an increase in the quality of services they could provide.
From the 1960s to 1990s, Ontario went from over 3,500 school boards, to 230 county school boards, and finally down to the 72 district school boards that exist today.
Board mandates shifted
During this time, the mandate of school boards has grown considerably. For much of their history, school boards were legally responsible for hiring teachers and furnishing schools.
Today’s school boards are also responsible for promoting student achievement, well-being, equity and inclusion, preventing bullying, providing for students with special education needs, ensuring community input through school councils, scheduling busing, establishing student dress codes and co-ordinating with child-care centres, among many other things. In Ontario, all of these responsibilities are highlighted in the Ontario Education Act.
As a result of these changes, school boards have become large and complex administrative units. This makes effective governance of school boards both challenging and important.
Contentious position of board trustees
Local school boards in Ontario are responsible for much of what happens in the day-to-day operation of schools, with members of the school board receiving their positions through municipal elections, a process that is often misunderstood.
The position of the school board trustee is contentious. Almost anyone qualifies for a role and obtains great power to influence educational policy and practice, raising questions about the tension between democratic control and expert authority.
While it’s clear that school trustees play an important role in shaping the education that children receive, during election time voters often have little awareness of their trustee candidates.
According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, this has provided an opening for far-right groups to try to stack school boards with candidates that harbour anti-equity ideologies.
To help prevent this, the organization has come up with a framework for asking trustee candidates important questions that are centred around children’s rights.
Student well-being
While local democratic engagement is necessary, it is important that politics not be allowed to subsume school districts and distract from the core purpose of schooling — student learning and well-being.
Checks and balances are required to ensure that the focus remains on creating and sustaining a school system that all students deserve.
As our society rethinks possibilities for critical democratic engagement in schooling that attends to issues of power and identity, we invite rethinking school boards. Communities need to imagine decision-making structures that include students, community organizations, educational experts and elected officials.
Sachin Maharaj is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Program Evaluation, Faculty of Education, at the University of Ottawa. Stephanie Tuters is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Vidya Shah is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, York University, Canada.
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Deborah Coffey says
What is needed to stop the hate? Should we make any open display of intolerance a felony? We’d have to arrest every Republican in America. They are pulling these ideas…CRT, Don’t say gay, groomers, inner city crime, voter fraud, etc….right out of the depths of hell. They are all lies that feed the unhappy, unfulfilled lives of the people in their base…people who will once again vote against their own best interests in a couple of weeks, votes that will guarantee that their lives will be made even more miserable. But, they will find their joy in blaming Democrats for destroying their country when in fact it will be the GOP that will deliberately drive America into the ground because the right wing’s only goal is everlasting power and, 2024 looms. I wish I could see a happy ending here. America has survived so many crises, but the current state of the country today seems to be the worst I can recall in three quarters of a century.
bob says
what ever is said or written I’m still glad Jill Woolbright and Janet McDonald lost their election bids
JimBob says
One of them has been replaced by a virtual right wing clone and the other may well be replaced likewise, both under the imprimatur of the governor.
Blossom says
How dare you blame these ladies for all this… First, you jacked with a successful teaching curriculum that went back decades. Then came political agendas, transvestites and all forms of sex being shoved on these children.
Who was it that ok’d that? Did they get permission from the parents?
I am sorry, but there will be no sympathy here about the blowback from this political agenda. This country WILL stand against the forced teaching of this. Why is it so hard to keep your politics out of the elementary education system and TEACH THE BASICS?
Pierre Tristam says
The commenter, whom I know well and who knows me enough to know she’ll forgive me (in a few days anyway) for saying she’s full of shit, knows she’s full of shit, knows these two “ladies” are exclusively responsible for the poisoning of our school board from the least-drama local board of the last decade to its most putrid, knows they did it, as they all do, with ideological malice, knowing there are no such things being taught, only peddled as fear-mongering by poisoners like them who have no better ways to make a mark or rise above the muck of their party’s lowest denominators. Then Blossoms, queen of the disingenuous, has the gall to cry her crocodile tears about divisiveness.
Deborah Coffey says
Blossom, you are spewing lies. NONE, absolutely NONE of that kind of teaching is occurring in ANY school in the United States of America. Your LIE is as big as Trump’s having a stolen election in 2020. Are you IN education? Have you had the privilege of sitting in hundreds of classrooms? Have you studied and developed curriculum? No. You’re just spewing bullshit.
Michael Cocchiola says
In Canada as in America, extremist conservatives are threatening and intimidating their way into power in local political races. For the most part, the people who support this repression of understanding and tolerance have no moral or ethical boundaries. They harrass and frighten their targeted victims into silence, or worse, either quitting their elected offices or declining to run.
Americans, in particular, face an existential moment in history on November 8th. Do we defend our 240 year-old experiment in democracy or do we quit the fight in fear and exhaustion and let those who seek an ultra-conservative authoritarian theocracy take the country back to our darkest days of bigotry and hate for all people not white, Western European, god-fearing vigilanties.
If hate and fear win in November, we no longer live in the America we thought we were building. We live in the next Russia or Turkey or Venezuela. And remember this in November… today the extremist Republicans would destroy those who are gay, Asian, Black or Jewish. Tomorrow, they’ll come for you.
James says
I’m afraid the battle is lost here in Flagler… have you seen the ballot? Have you read the articles regarding the level of active participation on the part of the citizenry and local law enforcement here in connection to the Jan 6th capital riot? Did the “Trump Club” dis-band quietly… even as information has leaked that some of the documents held at Mar-a-Lago were indeed of a highly sensitive nature? Or does “the band drum on” without even a slightest doubt that their “allegiance to the Trump flag” might be misplaced?
To observe how Palm Coast has become transformed into “nutsville” over the last few years is truly astonishing in my opinion. Perhaps even amusing… if not for the fact that I live here… and I don’t have a farm in Vermont to move back to.
Well, perhaps its always been nutsville now that I think about it, just not this noticeable.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Teachers should teach histrory, math, science, & p.e. Thats it….Its our job as parents to teach our kids about everything else.Every family has values that make parents indespenceable. We dont have to reivent teachings….All of us that went to school in the 60,s & 70,s had no problems, we are successfull members of society. Go back to reality, and teach our kids the same way we were taught.
Pierre Tristam says
Families are absolutely free to indoctrinate their children with whatever values they choose. But raising a child is not the same as educating a child. Most parents, assuming they’re even around, don’t know squat about how to educate a child, and most of those who are around are toxic when they try to impersonate educators. That’s why we have professional teachers. Mistrusting them is a reflection of ignorance. It’s not that crock known as “parental rights.”
C. J. says
The right has chosen School Boards as their training grounds for running for government offices (Local or State/Federal). I have yet had anyone testily/explain how their child has been taught how to change into another gender! Next, health classes will be forbidden/banned by these twisted people. Children will mature into adulthood and will discover their proclivities despite any educational curriculum. These local educational board members derailed true education in this county/city and interfered with the intellectual development of our young people. Children should be taught how to comprehensively analyze what they come into contact with, not how to believe propaganda.
James says
Public school is just that, it is where the future citizens of our nation also learn (besides the “three R’s”) perhaps one of the most important implicit lessons of life… how to get along with other people, and particularly people who might be very different from themselves.
One could call this a form of “indoctrination,” but as evidenced by the opinions expressed here by many self proclaimed former public school students, is there really anything to fear?
Just something to think about in my opinion.