Back to the basics

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce was in Barrhaven on his whirlwind tour of Ottawa last week, and you had to sense he was on his toes waiting for something to challenge him from the Ottawa Carleton District School Board.

The OCDSB’s alliance of extremist trustees who control the board’s decisions have forced the board to spend an enormous amount of time on issues like who is permitted to use which washroom regardless of the religious violations to other cultures or the uncomforts and fears caused to many students and their parents.

Anyone who dared raise the topic for reasonable discussion at OCDSB meetings was immediately shut down and accused of hate speech and for being transphobic.

They also spent a lot of time making sure that the relationship with the Ottawa Police Service remained as poor as it could possibly be. Deep-sixing the SRO program made the students who are policephobic feel more safe. It made everyone else feel less safe.

And let’s not forget the first meeting of the year, which turned into a public dumpster fire when one of the woke alliance trustees tried to mandate masks for everyone, all the time, with no end in site.

What they seemed to spend no time whatsoever on, however, was education.

Lecce introduced Bill 98 earlier this year. The bill is also called the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act. It is designed to get schools and school boards to refocus on the basics of education.

Lecce said the bill was introduced to send a signal to school boards to refocus their energies on what matters most, which is improving reading, writing and math skills and STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] education.”

Lecce has been made well aware of what is happening locally. There has to be some relationship between Bill 98 and the actions of the OCDSB.

What we are waiting for, though, is how this Bill will change things in the fall, once it becomes law. What will the consequences be for the school board meetings that turn into gong shows? We still find it deliciously hypocritical that Board Chair Lyra Evans and her woke minions on the board are so hell bent on banning uniformed police from all public board schools, but they are quick to call 9-1-1 to have the police come to school board meetings to restore order when things get out of hand, which seems to be often.

For the record, that has happened three times so far this year.

There is too much politics in schools right now. And if a student’s politics aren’t pro-trans and pro-LGBTQ2+, he or she or whichever pronoun the child likes to use will be alienated and labelled.

The OCDSB woke alliance often forgets they represent parents. And many of those parents want them to leave the politics up to the parents at home and teach the children academics.