Ontario school board tried to scrub parent objections to land acknowledgements

The Waterloo Region District School Board attempted to remove a parent’s objection to land acknowledgements from its official Parent Involvement Committee meeting minutes.

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The Waterloo Region District School Board attempted to remove a parent’s objection to land acknowledgements from its official Parent Involvement Committee meeting minutes. This is the second time that an Ontario school board interferes in parent-led governance to suppress disagreement with land acknowledgements from appearing on public records.

In September, parent member Cristina Bairos Fernandes raised a procedural objection to opening Parent Involvement Committee meetings with a land acknowledgement. Fernandes has previously been successful at removing land acknowledgements from parent council meetings.

The Parent Involvement Committee’s then-chair agreed to “note” the objection but director Scott Miller, immediately intervened stating that “as far as objections being noted in the minutes… we won’t be recording that.”

“I think we’ve been pretty clear as a district school board what we believe, our commitment to Truth and Reconciliation, call to action. And that’s across the province,” he said.

Miller was referring to the Ministry of Education’s recent intervention at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, compelling the board to raise the “Survivors’ Flag” for Truth and Reconciliation even after the board adopted a “government-flags only” policy.

At the November meeting, the committee ultimately voted to record the objections but to exclude mention of the director’s interference.

Some parents were left confused. Fernandes insisted that “it happened” and asked “why would we want to erase history?”

Another parent member, Geoff Horseman, requested that the minutes include the director’s interference “rather than [leaving it out] as though it never happened.” He said that omitting the exchange would erase a set of facts that accurately chronicled events.

This is not the first time a parent has faced roadblocks for objecting to land acknowledgements at parent-run meetings. Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board parent Catherine Kronas raised concerns about the imposition of political speech in government settings. They asked that her objection be recorded in the minutes of the Ancaster High School parent council meeting. Instead, she was suspended from attending council meetings. Kronas was later reinstated following legal intervention from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

In both cases, the parents expressed concern that reciting land acknowledgements was a form of political speech and questioned their appropriateness in government institutions. Senior leadership acted quickly to keep details of their objections out of the public record.

Fernandes says interference from the board isn’t a one-off. She explained that the board had cancelled an information night that parents had been requesting for months.

“PIC supported an event the community continues to ask for, and the board simply did what it wanted anyway,” she said. “Now we are told PIC cannot go against anything the board or ministry decide. If we cannot even question direction, then PIC is not a representative voice for parents. It is just an extension of the board.”

Education Minister Paul Calandra has recently established Student and Family Support Offices for boards under provincial supervision, though Waterloo and Hamilton are not among them. The ministry says these new groups will provide another avenue for input.

Based on Horseman’s experience, he’s skeptical that the new support offices will help parents voice their concerns. “There is no incentive to reform public education from within. It will only happen when parents are given options of how to spend their own money on their children’s education. I think many parents, when given the choice, would go elsewhere. Only then would the WRDSB be incentivized to refocus on education over politics.”

The board did not respond to a request for comment.