While there are definitely some Toronto parents and public school supporters who agree with the notion of an Africentric program from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12, the speed at which Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustees and members of its “advisory panel” are putting forward and approving proposals is clearly political. 

For example, today’s Toronto Star editorial comment states:

“Bureaucrats at the Toronto public school board have barely begun the effort of launching an Africentric elementary school this coming fall. But now some trustees are calling for an Africentric high school to open just one year later.”

So, however well intentioned, some TDSB trustees are making recommendations for an Africentric high school without adequate “action research” and feedback on the pilot elementary program slated for Sheppard Public School in September of this year.  As such, in their unseemly haste, the needs of the students seem to have been forgotten or minimized.

Moreover, since the pilot project at Sheppard is to be a JK - Grade 5 “school within a school,” what has happened to the intermediate Grades 6 - 8?  Are students aged 11 to 13 supposed to be included with the high school aged youth? That would be a big mistake and a recipe for bullying.

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According to the Saturday edition of the Toronto Star, Louise Brown says that the Toronto District School Board is proposing to put “Canada’s first Africentric alternative school within a school — not a free-standing building — for a wing of sprawling Sheppard Public School near the northwest corner of Sheppard Avenue West and Keele Street” in Toronto.

Scheduled to open in September 2009 for children in Grades JK to 5, area trustee James Pasternak said the new school would bolster falling enrollment at Sheppard and add a vibrant program that would NOT be separate from all the other students attending Sheppard.

“There’s this misconception of two solitudes running down the halls, but that’s incorrect — these kids (in the regular school and the Africentric wing) would be together in the schoolyard, together in the playground, together in the lunchroom,” said Pasternak.

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During the October 2007 Ontario election, Canadians will no doubt remember the yelling and screaming about the John Tory proposal to provide public funding to some faith-based schools. You would have thought the sky was falling.

We were told that to provide independent schools with any amount of public money, and parents with school choice, would be divisive and, quite possibly, even destroy the public school system as we know it?

Destroy the system as we know it?  Dare I ask: Would that be such a bad thing, particularly since the system as we know it is a system entrenched in educational practices that do not necessarily meet the needs of many children? The system as we know it also means maintaining the status quo for the benefit of teachers’ unions, trustee associations and board administrations.

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(See update below.) I rarely disagree with the Toronto Sun’s Christina Blizzard but she has blinders on when it comes to Eden High School in St. Catharines, Ontario. While I would like to criticize the McGuinty Liberal government for hypocrisy, I won’t. Because Eden High School is NOT, I repeat, is NOT a faith based publicly funded high school — although to be completely up front, I did make those claims during the heat of the 2007 Ontario election campaign. Rather, it is an alternative public high school, like every other publicly funded alternative high school.

If it was a true FB school, the students at Eden would be able to do spiritual activities during school hours like all Catholic schools do now.

And, spare me the cry that Eden is at fault for other public high schools closing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any of those schools. Eden could cease to exist and those schools would still have to close. Few, if any students, were taken from other existing neighbourhood high schools. They come from all over the county, either in buses that would otherwise be nearly empty, by parent funded buses or by parent car pool.

Parents and journalists need to get over the fact that Eden is a success story. It is true that it is an alternative school, but a very different type of alternative school. A contract was made over twenty years ago with the local Mennonite Brethren community. As Education Minister Kathleen Wynn says, Eden has been grandfathered. If Eden closed, the parents would either fund their own private school, send their youth to existing private Christian schools or to local Catholic high schools.

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I usually agree with Christina Blizzard but not today. In her Sunday column in the Toronto Sun she is asking that Eden High School, the publicly funded faith-based alternative school located in the City of St. Catharines, Ontario be closed. Why? Because apparently some parents in Niagara-on-the-Lake are angry that the main high school there — Niagara District Secondary School — will be shut down for a lack of enrollment? Yet, even if Eden were closed, the majority of its students would not attend that school because Eden students come from all over the Niagara region. Moreover, parents would simply move their students to a Catholic high school given its similar Christian values.

Clearly Blizzard didn’t do her homework on this story. It is true that Eden has the same high school curriculum as any other Ontario public high school, secular or Catholic, and that all its spiritual activities are before and after school. It is also true that its teachers are all part of the the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF). But, what she doesn’t tell you is the history of the school.

I know this history personally because I taught at Eden when it was still a private high school located on Highway 55 in Niagara-on-the-Lake and I currently have family members involved there — both as a student and a parent council member. And, I wrote about it during the October 2007 provincial election campaign.Twenty years ago the Eden High School board started to meet with senior administrators and trustees of the District Board of Niagara. Eden was called Eden Christian College at that point. After lengthy negotiations the Eden board went to the members of the Mennonite Brethren Church Community across all of Ontario and asked permission for Eden to be integrated into the public system but with two boards overseeing its management.
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Here is yet another voice against the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) decision to approve an Africentric or black-focused school in September 2009. Read Michele Mandel’s Toronto Sun column, dated February 25th, about a very successful black woman by the name of Ms. Brenya Griffin Vinson. She is against the decision because it is an artificial setting that, while comfortable, is not real.

Griffin Vinson’s story is important for several reasons. First, she grew up in the Jane Finch area of Toronto and knows first-hand what it is like to experience poverty, racism and discrimination. Second, she attended a black-focused or Africentric school early in her life and completely understands the comfort and unreality of such an environment. Third, a middle school guidance counsellor (who happened to be Jewish and white) taught her that what really counted in her life was not necessarily an Africentric curriculum or all-black teachers. Rather, “what matters is if they [the teachers] show compassion and understanding.” And fourth, she completely disagrees with the current plan to open an Africentric high school in the city where she grew up.

In her own words, here is why Griffin Vinson disagrees:

“I don’t think it’s a good idea because they haven’t tried everything else yet.”

“Afrocentric studies are not going to help us in our multicultural society. What happens after? In the real world, are you allowed to choose who your co-workers are and who your boss is? Are we setting up a false illusion of comfort?”

“Without compassion, understanding and patience — these youth will not be reached. These traits are not Afrocentric. I think we can empower our kids from within.”

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The purpose of this entry is to throw some ideas around about what I think “school choice” really means. First and foremost, I do not want to destroy the current publicly funded system (English and French), whether the secular public system or the Catholic system — that would simply be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and change is possible without doing that.

Recently, the Toronto District Board of Education (TDSB) approved a black-focused or Africentric school. I was completely against that decision because I saw it as a type of segregation and demeaning to the students who I think deserve better — particularly given the multicultural society we live in. What surprised me, however, was the fact that school choice advocates saw it as a good idea — that if that was what a group of parents wanted, then that was fine by them.

I am still bothered by that rationale.  To me it is a slippery slope to segregating all manner of children. Haven’t we moved beyond that by being inclusive of children with special needs, for example. Wasn’t that what parents fought for during the 1980’s — to have their exceptional children integrated into regular classrooms. Now, we have parents wanting to segregate children on the basis of culture and colour.

The bottom line is that we now have two publicly funded systems and within those systems, we have alternative schools. Then, apart from both those systems, we have independent or private schools — some which have been around seventy-five or more years. At the same time, we are also hearing a lot about school choice and how ideal it would be for parents to be able to choose the best school for their children based on their academic and/or special needs. 

Examples of school choice are usually the kind of charter schools they have in Alberta and the U.S. – where the funding apparently follows the student. Which seems to suggest that charter schools are sort of public because there is government funding and curriculum accountability and expectations.

So, what would choice look like in Ontario? How disruptive would it be to the current public systems? And, as a conservative, I have to ask the obvious question — would it cost taxpayers even more money? And, in the final analysis, would that kind of expense and multi-choice system be a good thing? Just wondering.

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You can always count on former Ontario MPP John Snobelen to tell it like he sees it. When I was the EA and Communications Advisor for an Ontario MPP during the first Mike Harris mandate, my boss was one of Snobelen’s Parliamentary Assistants when he was Education Minister.  Although he would not likely remember me, I sure remember him. Efficient and effective certainly describe him in spite of what rank and file educators thought of him. 

A couple of weeks ago he mentioned in one of his columns that he hated photo ops and one stood out in his mind — when he and his two parliamentary assistant colleagues pushed a wheel barrow full of reports for the television cameras.

Well, guess what? I was one of the staff who filled up that wheel barrow. I am not sure who thought up the idea but it really was silly. I really laughed when he wrote about it because he really was annoyed at the whole thing and thought it was a waste of time. Yet, even though the media knew it was a set-up, they loved it.
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(See updates.)

First post dated January 24th, 2008: So, it’s essentially a done deal. According to today’s Toronto Star, Toronto District School Board (TDSB) staff have approved the first (which means there will be more) black-focused school with a final vote by board trustees expected next Tuesday evening, January 29th, 2008. Now, remember, that meeting was supposed to be an open public meeting – which means it really isn’t meant to test public reaction. The board has already made up its collective mind.

The school is to open in the fall of 2009. What an absolute disgrace — to put “loser” labels on so many black young people who deserve so much more. What more can I say?  In spite of the fact that Canada is a multicultural country, the City of Toronto will now have the distinction of a return to segregation! Apartheid in our largest city.

Usually known as the “economic” engine of the country, it will now be known for this.  This decision is not about political correctness or the needs of the black students requiring help and new opportunities. It’s about a distrust of the education system felt by many blacks and a segregated school is not going to do anything to reduce that mistrust. In fact, in time it will only increase the mistrust as this experiment in human lives fails. Everyone involved in this decision to go ahead should be ashamed!

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This is a message to Premier Dalton McGuinty dated January 31, 2008. 

Dear Mr. McGuinty:

In a fair democratic election, you were recently re-elected as an MPP and, as the Leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario, returned to power as the Premier of Ontario. I may disagree with many of your policies but I agree with your right to win.  And, in winning, you now represent me and everyone else in this province regardless of our political preferences or differences.

Therefore, since you are now in charge of the Ontario education system, along with your appointed representative, MPP and Education Minister Kathleen Wynn, both of you should stand up and be counted. Stop the blacks-only Toronto school board decision right now. You can do it. It is within your jurisdiction to do so.

Undoing this decision is about leadership. As unpopular as it might be to some people, it would show real bravery and honesty. And, it would be completely consistent with your position during the recent election. Remember, both you and Wynn won the recent Ontario election by being against any kind of school that would be divisive and segregate people according to differences.

Specifically, you both openly campaigned against publicly funded faith-based schools and the majority of the voters of Ontario voted to return you to power — meaning the majority were obviously against such a policy. Therefore, if you are both against the blacks-only school, do the right and brave thing. Just say “no.”

Instead, according to Karen Howlett of the Globe and Mail, what seems to be happening is not leadership. On the one hand, Mr. Premier, you are saying publicly you are against the proposal, very disappointed with the decision and will not fund it. Yet, on the other hand, you are also saying that you will not stand in the way of its implementation.

This is where the rubber hits the road. This is why you, Mr. McGuinty are the Premier — the leader — the one in charge. Not only should the buck stop with you, but the hard and right decisions as well. Therefore, please do the right thing and say no to segregation and no to any kind of apartheid — no matter how well intentioned it might be.

Sincerely,
crux-of-the-Matter.com

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