‘I’m concerned about performative policies’: Trustee criticizes PDSB over budget that lacks critical funding to eradicate systemic racism 

During a tense meeting on July 2, when the Peel District School Board’s proposed $2.2 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2025-2026 was discussed, Trustee Kathy McDonald vigorously opposed the financial blueprint that was eventually approved for the coming school year.

She raised concerns over the lack of funding to implement provincially-mandated directives carefully designed by the education ministry to dismantle anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination in the PDSB, following a disturbing probe by the province launched in 2019 that found systemic discrimination, particularly anti-Black racism, was deeply entrenched in the PDSB’s culture and practices.

"I'm acutely aware that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) appears to be out of fashion, but to me, it is a cornerstone of my modus operandi, and this budget does not address and, in some cases, neglects the human rights of the people we serve," she told those in attendance during the public meeting.

McDonald raised concerns about costs that are possibly still being paid to cover legal fees in human rights cases against the PDSB stemming from problems with systemic racism. She criticized the lack of transparency around these legal expenses covered by taxpayers, and said that the fundamental rights of all students to be protected while receiving a high standard of education, need to be the core focus of the annual budget.

“Unfortunately, I cannot support this budget as those basic criteria are not met.” 

The PDSB defended the budget, describing its passage as “reaffirming its commitment to student well-being, academic excellence and responsible financial stewardship.”

Two of the outstanding directives mandated by the province, which according to recent reports have still not been met, are arguably the most critical. McDonald has highlighted the PDSB’s inability or unwillingness to eradicate these problems: Directive 22 requires PDSB to dismantle disparities in suspension and expulsions against marginalized students through the gathering of race-based data and other measures. Historically, the Board has suspended and expelled Black and Indigenous students at a much higher rate than their representation within the student body; while white students have not been punished when breaking the same rules. In many cases, it was unclear which rule under the provincial Education Act was broken by Black students because the alleged offence was simply marked as “other” instead of detailing the specific violation under the Act. The Province directed the Board to reduce these disproportionalities by 50 percent. According to a 2024 status report on Directive 22, this target has not yet been achieved.

The second item McDonald has raised concerns about recently is Directive 19, which mandates the board to “design a secondary school de-streaming pilot project for Grade 9 and Grade 10 students and that the pilot should include at least two secondary schools where there are the highest proportions of students who identify as Black in applied and locally developed courses."

Peel District School Board Trustee Kathy McDonald was the only board member to criticize the budget for failing to invest in measures to address systemic discrimination.

(The Pointer files)

The provincial review found numerous examples of shocking harm done to Black students for years, streaming them into non-university educational pathways, simply because they are Black. White students with similar or worse academic performance were encouraged to take classes for university, opening up economic opportunities and other critical life experiences denied to Black students. 

The work to get rid of streaming in the PDSB, mandated by the province, has not been prioritized, according to critics.

McDonald has been a driving force for reform at the PDSB for years, and was instrumental in the sweeping changes demanded by the provincial government in 2020, detailed in 27 binding directives imposed shortly before the ministry was forced to take over governance of the troubled school board which had failed to protect racialized students (who make up about 85 percent of the PDSB) for decades. 

Senior staff say 25 of the 27 directives are completed; the board has been criticized in the past for claiming directives have been met, when the root cause of a particular problem remained unaddressed. 

"The shameful failure to expressly recognize the Tamil genocide week, a lack of adequate responses to the concerns of a group of Palestinian educators and the continuing anti-Black racism that too many Black students are facing in this board that goes unresolved,” were examples McDonald highlighted, when she questioned if the directives were actually being followed during the July 2 meeting. “I’m concerned about performative policies and inaccurate feel-good statements that are communicated to the public. Truth matters. Facts matter.”

The budget had been introduced by David Green, the PDSB Chair, and presented by Jaspal Gill, PDSB’s Chief Operating Officer. McDonald was the only trustee who didn’t support it.

During McDonald’s remarks at the meeting, a tense exchange unfolded between her and Green when he cut her off, claiming her five minutes were up. "It's not,” she replied. “I have the time.” McDonald was recording her allotted time and The Pointer verified that she appeared to have at least one minute left. “I'm not sure what clock you're using. I have 3:47,” she said. “You can go and stop and check it."

It’s unusual for a trustee to be held to the five-minute limit so rigidly, and not uncommon for members to speak much longer without any interjection by the meeting’s chair. It’s common for a chair to remind a trustee a few seconds before their time is up and allow them to carry on.

Before concluding her remarks, McDonald reminded Green that she still had "15 seconds left."

McDonald declined to comment further on the budget proceedings after the document was approved by the board’s trustees.

While the Board continues to claim significant progress has been made on the 27 directives issued by the Minister of Education during the 2019-2020 school year, critics argue that systemic racism is still harming vulnerable students. 

A progress report last year found the Board was still suspending and expelling Black and Indigenous students at a disturbing rate. A 2020 review concluded the PDSB was causing disproportionate harm to visible minority students through a number of rigid and biased organizational practices, including suspending Black secondary school students at a rate 2.2 times higher than their representation in the overall student body. Black students make up only 10.2 percent of the secondary school population, but about 22.5 percent of students that had received suspensions. A progress report last year revealed these rates remained largely unchanged.

The review conducted by the Ministry in 2019 and 2020 showed the glaring discrepancies between the treatment of Black and white students. The provincial investigation looked at extensive PDSB disciplinary data that revealed Black students were suspended or punished in other ways for minor infractions such as wearing hoodies or hoop earrings while white students who did the exact same thing rarely received similar punishment.  

The roots of the ongoing harm goes back decades, when members of the community came forward with complaints of systemic racism across the Board, which eventually triggered provincial intervention.

In November 2019, Ontario’s education minister at the time, Stephen Lecce, finally acknowledged the mounting concerns after families, students and trustees filed numerous complaints about anti-Black racism in the Board, which led to a three-member team conducting an extensive formal review.

They reported their findings to Lecce in February 2020. On March 13 of that year, he issued 27 binding directives to the PDSB, to address systemic discrimination, including the Board’s issues with anti-Black racism, flawed human resource practices, problematic Board leadership and governance, including the disturbing behaviour of elected trustees, all of which prompted the initial review.

In the months following the release of the directives, the PDSB underwent investigation by the Ministry to determine its commitment to address the binding orders issued by the minister. The findings of that investigation, conducted by lawyer Arleen Huggins, were reported to Lecce in May of 2020, and determined that, "the Board has failed to comply with Directions that can easily be characterized as straight-forward." 

She determined through her investigation that the Board was "dysfunctional and, with no prospect of successful mediation, is incapable of providing good governance." Huggins wrote that the Board "has a misunderstanding of anti-Black racism," and that "there is no evidence that the Board has a willingness to engage in the necessary work to gain such an understanding, nor does the Board understand the urgency of the need to do so."

In the wake of those findings, Lecce placed PDSB under provincial supervision, suspended its director at the time, Peter Joshua (who was fired shortly after) and Bruce Rodrigues took charge for almost two and a half years.

Since then, the PDSB has struggled to meet all of the directives.

In 2021, the board created a pilot project to allow all PDSB schools to offer de-streamed math and english classes for Grade 9 students. This surpassed the ministry directive which only required two schools to be a part of the pilot project. According to a status update on Directive 19 in February, “all applied and locally developed courses were eliminated in Grade 9 and 10,” and “de-streamed Grade 9 and 10 courses were offered in core subject areas.”

But critics have held up examples of Black students who continue to be denied academic opportunities and white teachers and administrators who still perpetuate streaming, oftentimes unconsciously. The Pointer has spoken to more than a dozen parents over the last two years who have said their children have been streamed out of university classes in PDSB schools. The PDSB has also been criticized for the over-representation of certain racial groups in gifted programs while deserving Black students are denied the opportunity for enriched education.

McDonald is not the only PDSB insider who has called out the Board for paying lip service to key equity commitments. 

Poleen Grewal, the board’s former equity director, recently filed a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal against the PDSB providing damning evidence of a culture resistant to the changes needed to address systemic racism that continues to cause harm to students.

“The PDSB undermined and did not support the Plaintiff’s equity and anti-Black racism work at the Board and then unfairly and falsely blamed her for the [2020] Ministry Review [which detailed a culture of systemic anti-Black racism] and supervision, making the Plaintiff a scapegoat for its own equity failures; The PDSB terminated the Plaintiff to appease PDSB staff and Trustees who were opposed to or felt threatened by equity and anti-Black racism work,” Grewal’s lawsuit, filed at the end of May in Ontario Superior Court, alleges.

McDonald emphasized that as the Board has mismanaged the budget certain critical financial issues are being kept from the public.

"Since before the 2024 budget, I've tried to ascertain from staff the cost of our legal fees, and I keep getting stonewalled," she said during the July 2 meeting. "I found out from a tweet (from CUPE Local 2544) that the cost that this board spends on legal fees when dealing with various labour groups comes to just under $1.5 million. I have no idea how much we're spending on legal fees for human rights complaints or settlements, as well as the money that is spent on paying staff to sit home while other staff have been paid to do the same job,” she said. “What is the cost of all of this? I don't know the operation. I don't need to know the operational aspects. I'm just trying to ascertain the bottom line. I cannot support cutting custodial staff whilst there are better ways to find savings. Other students and staff deserve to work in a clean and safe environment."

Idris Orughu, a community advocate, expressed a lack of faith in the Board, noting many of the issues that were the subject of the disturbing Ministry review released in 2020, which led to the takeover of the board, have actually gotten worse under the current leadership of the PDSB.

Orughu was a target of the PDSB’s leadership prior to the provincial takeover and was issued a trespass order in 2020 denying him access to the board’s properties after he publicly challenged the PDSB’s leadership for ignoring the harm they caused by perpetuating systemic discrimination. After the provincial takeover and the firing of the previous director of education, the PDSB issued him an apology for “acts of discrimination and anti-Black racism” and eventually rescinded the trespass notice, around the time of the ministry intervention.

"It's not even business as usual. It is worse than what it was before," he said.

“Minister (Stephen) Lecce (who was the education minister at the time) listened to us and supported us. The Board was taken over. Now we have the blowback of wokeism and DEI. Now the school Board has decided we're going to revert everything,” Orughu said.

Idris Orughu, a community advocate, expressed frustration over ongoing discrimination within the Peel District School Board.

(Supplied)

According to a press release from the Board: “This budget reflects our unwavering commitment to student well-being, academic success and equity,” Rashmi Swarup, Director of Education, said. “It is the result of meaningful collaboration and reflects our commitment to preparing students for a dynamic future. By listening to our community and aligning resources with what matters most, we’ve been able to prioritize the well-being, achievement and inclusion of every learner in PDSB.”

Swarup is also named in the lawsuit filed by Grewal, who alleges the director fired her to “appease those who were opposed to the Ministry Directives and the work around dismantling anti-Black racism.”

The PDSB has declined to comment on the contents of the Statement of Claim as it is before the courts.

While presenting the budget, Gill said the upcoming fiscal year poses challenges due to the growing needs for student support and the decline in student enrollment, which will lead to a drop in ministry funding. According to Gill, the Board has seen a decrease of more than 10,000 students since the 2019/20 school year. 

"This year's budget process was particularly challenging. (The) Board continues to experience declining enrollment alongside increasing support needs of our marginalized and vulnerable students," he said.

"At the same time, ministry funding formulas have not kept a pace with the rising costs associated with special education statutory benefits, sector-wide absenteeism, and the inflationary costs impacting non-salary expenditures."

While Gill focused on fiscal pressures, McDonald said her fundamental duty as an elected trustee, obligated to stand up for the most critical needs of the families she represents, sealed her decision to vote against the budget, questioning the priorities of the PDSB.

“My duty is to be fiscally responsible while focusing on student achievement and ensure that all students [don’t] merely survive, but that staff and students are provided an environment free of harassment and discrimination; and are given the tools they need to excel is paramount.”


 

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