A Message From Education Action: Toronto

June 29, 2010

Two protests, a common aim, and a growing coalition

Dear Friends,

Last Wednesday night saw a spirited double protest at the Toronto District School Board, when Somali parents from Queen's Plate Drive, who had lost their neighbourhood school, joined with parents from across the city who are about to lose their neighbourhood schools because of provincial cutbacks and the Board's unwillingness to fight back.

Nigel Barriffe, a Grade 3 teacher from Rexdale and the Co-Chair of Education Action: Etobicoke North, introduced the speakers. "Today," he said "we are brought together from two perspectives: The first is that of a largely Somali community on Queen's Plate Drive, which has lost its neighbourhood school as a result of what it experienced as a racist and class-biased restructuring of school boundaries. The second perspective is that of a number of other communities across our city which are now likely to lose their neighbourhood schools to pay for 13 years of cutbacks imposed by Queen's Park."

Nigel went on to say that "the children from Queen's Plate have paid a heavy price for losing their school. While the children, who will lose their neighbourhood schools after the current round of ARC meetings, can look forward to paying such a price themselves."

"This issue," he continued, "isn't just about losing your neighbourhood school. It's also about losing your school because you aren't rich enough or privileged enough to save it. In our Queen's Plate Somali community that point is clear enough. I know because these are my Rexdale neighbours, who continue to suffer from the highest unemployment rates in the city, and where there is a 40% drop out rate amongst our Somali, English-speaking Caribbean, African, Latino and South Asian youth. And when we look at the schools that were listed for a school closing (or an ARC process) it is also clear that poor communities are heavily over-represented on the hit list."

"For all of these communities, we need the schools we have and for some of these communities we need more schools. And we need all of our schools expanded into community hubs or genuine "full service schools." We also need them as energy and revenue producers by retro-fitting them and plugging them back into the grid. None should be lost."

In Wednesday's demonstration these two groups were supported by wide range of community and labour organizations. Don MacMillan, from The Campaign for Public Education's Save Our Schools initiative brought the two groups together and coordinated the protest. The protest itself was solidly supported by the Queen's Plate parents, by parents groups from all the schools that are to be closed, by representatives from our adult students' organization, by our school board workers' and elementary and secondary teachers' unions, by the Toronto District Labour Council, by Save Ontario Schools, by Community Organizing for Responsible Development (CORD) and by a number of progressive school trustees candidates who hope to take the issue of school closings into the next school board election on the 25th of October.

It is this kind of community and labour coming together that will eventually produce the kind of resistance - contained in a coalition with genuine depth and purpose - that can turn back the current assault on our public schools and bring us together in the building of a life-giving future for all our children.

We are attaching three pieces on the Queen's Plate protest - the speeches by the co-chairs of the parent-community group - Hibo Hagi-Nur and Abdullah Wardhere - and a column by Royson James in the Toronto Star.