Largest school board in Ontario under fire after field trip to downtown protest

Ontario’s largest schoolhouse committee is nether occurrence aft students astatine respective schools were taken connected a tract travel wherever they look to person ended up taking portion successful a protestation held successful downtown Toronto.

Students astatine a fig of Toronto District School Board schools were fixed support to caput to a time of enactment for the radical of Grassy Narrows First Nation connected Wednesday, whose assemblage stream was impacted by years of mercury poisoning.

The committee said a travel to presumption a protestation by Grassy Narrows that had promised to pull thousands extracurricular Queen’s Park was “an acquisition acquisition for students to perceive from Indigenous voices astir the ongoing challenges faced by the radical of Grassy Narrows.”

Some parents and different groups, however, complained the travel veered distant from acquisition and into protestation and activism.

“I’ve been to galore protests successful my beingness and if this was not a protest, I volition devour my hat,”  the parent of a kid astatine an eastbound Toronto schoolhouse told Corus Entertainment’s AM 640 Radio.

(Global News, besides owned by Corus, has agreed not to sanction the genitor owed to concerns astir backlash.)

“There were radical successful masks, radical donning keffiyehs, showing signs astir the Israel-Gaza war. This was a protestation — and this is not the messaging that teachers enactment connected accusation to parents astir what they were doing.”

The schoolhouse committee itself admitted the lawsuit had not played retired arsenic expected and said an interior reappraisal would instrumentality place.

“We recognize that issues beyond the main absorption of this lawsuit were raised and that immoderate students whitethorn person been negatively impacted by what they saw and heard,” TDSB said successful a statement.

“The TDSB was not alert that students would prosecute with immoderate issues extracurricular of the main focus… and we apologize for the harm that immoderate students whitethorn person experienced arsenic a result. At this time, we are supporting impacted students and their families.”

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The tract travel has been met with fierce disapproval from some, and Ontario Education Minister Jill Dunlop has weighed in.

“I americium profoundly disappointed by yesterday’s events,” Dunlop wrote successful a societal media post.

“Compromising the information and information of students is unacceptable. I expect TDSB to behaviour a thorough reappraisal of the concern and guarantee accountability with parents and students to forestall aboriginal incidents.”

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a salient Jewish group, besides called for a elaborate reappraisal to beryllium launched by the schoolhouse board.

“FSWC was instantly successful connection with TDSB leadership, expressing outrage implicit this egregious usurpation of parental spot and the harm caused to students,” the radical said successful a connection Friday.

The TDSB said it remained committed to acquisition connected information and reconciliation but would reappraisal its travel procedures. It besides said that students should not “in general” beryllium participating successful protests arsenic portion of a schoolhouse trip.