Montreal school board urged to fix racism and discrimination within schools

MONTREAL (CityNews) – A final report from Montreal’s task force on equity and inclusion is urging the Lester B. Pearson School Board to address issues of racism and discrimination to make schools safer.

Over 100 recommendations were made on Tuesday, coming a year after racist incidents within the school board’s community occurred.

“[It] served as a wake-up call for us. Actually, they were more of a rude awakening, as these behaviours do not reflect the values we espouse at Lester B. Pearson School Board,” said Noel Burke, chairperson of the Lester B. Pearson School Board’s council of commissioners.

For students within the LBPSB, those behaviours are seen. Last year, two incidents in connection with schools the board oversees, made headlines.

A video posted to social media in June, showing two young female students dressed in blackface, using racial slurs and mocking the black community. And a yearbook published with a photo of a black student under the heading ‘most likely to become a wanted criminal.’

This sparked the creation of the task force – where over 11 months – students, parents and alumni were heard, with some details being singled out over their race

“I’ve definitely experienced racism and discrimination from classmates or staff members. It could be from the colour of my skin, my name sounds, my religion,” explained Barrakah Mohamed, a grade 11 LBPSB student. “They’d be like you’re Muslim and say ‘Allah Akbar and boom’ and make terrorist jokes.”

“Sometimes teachers will turn a blind eye just to not draw too much attention to it. ‘Oh, its not that big of a deal don’t worry about it, or it’s ok just brush it off it won’t happen again, or, we’ll speak to them’ and they’ll just say ‘that wasn’t nice don’t do that again.’ But that’s it,” she added.

“There was a lot of pent-up hurt,” said Dr. Myran Lashley, chairperson of the task force. “Some educators may not realize that they were some of the things that parents were complaining [about] and which inadvertently hurt children.”

“Professional development for teachers and staff will be a key element of the work going forward,” added Dr. Lashley. “We have to put things in place that tells those parents when you drop your kid off here where your child goes in there, they’re in a safe place. People are going to look out for them.

“Every student who goes into any school anywhere should be going into a safe place.”

Some of the recommendations they’ve made:

• Review board-wide policies and implement in each of them a clearly defined section that specifically addresses racist and ethnic-related incidents
• Concrete demonstrations of diversity and inclusion via long-term and ongoing projects, rather than only symbolic gestures that claim to support anti-racist initiatives
• Schools should invite speakers who represent different religious communities to speak to students as one possible method of challenging stereotypes and myths about religious groups
• Schools should be aware of holidays celebrated by various religious groups (not only Judeo-Christian families) and not hold major school events and mandatory examinations on these holidays
• Ask the community and families what celebrations and events are important to them
• LBPSB does a thorough investigation on how many of their schools (elementary, secondary and adult education centres) have gender-neutral bathrooms and changing rooms, how many facilities they have, and their locations (are they in inconvenient locations?)
• Schedule regular workshops on gender and sexual identity

The school board assures an action plan will be delivered in the fall. In the meantime, Dr. Lashley says she hopes these changes catch on in other institutions and organizations.