TDSB human rights report says anti-Black racism involved in ‘overwhelming’ majority of hate incidents

The Toronto District School Board has seen a stark increase in human rights complaints in recent years linked to racism — specifically anti-Black racism — with the bulk of complaints launched by teachers, according to an alarming new report.

And the inordinate number of human rights incidents reported by Black administrators is so concerning that the board has launched a separate review, says the TDSB’s Human Rights Annual Report 2018-2020.

“We see a very distinct pattern of a disproportionate number of complaints being based on race, specifically anti-Black racism,” said Jim Spyropoulos, executive superintendent of equity, engagement and well-being at the board.

A larger number of Black administrators are “starting to come forward” to discuss incidents of anti-Black racism toward them, said Spyropoulos.

“We have drawn the conclusion that anti-Black racism is a very serious issue at the TDSB, and it just confirms data that we’ve had over many years,” he said.

The report is the first of its kind within the TDSB and in Ontario. It examined complaints made to the board’s Human Rights Office from 2018 to 2020 along with analyzing incidents of hate that have occurred in schools, and the results of recent surveys given to staff, students and parents.

Its publication comes as the board continues to face criticism — particularly in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests last spring and summer — of anti-Black racism within its schools affecting staff, students and families.

The report found that in the 2019-2020 school year, 201 of 291 hate incidents were related to race, and the “overwhelming majority” of those involved anti-Black racism.

Of the 291 incidents, after anti-Black racism, the top categories were “other forms of racism,” homophobia and anti-Semitism. Incidents of anti-Semitism and homophobia have risen at an “alarming rate” in the 2019-2020 school year, the report states.

Hate incidents quadrupled, from 64 hate incident reports in the 2018-2019 school year to 291 in 2019-20.

This is likely due to the introduction of new rules requiring hate incidents to be recorded in board schools, with the launch of a new tool, said Spyropoulos, in December 2019. The report also noted a general increase in human rights complaints in other institutions with Black Lives Matter and other social movements gaining prominence.

Separately from the discussion of hate incidents, the report also looked at complaints made to the human rights office. Most of those were by employees, and most were on “race and related grounds” — 70 out of 129 complaints in 2019-2020.

Regarding the large number of complaints from Black administrators, the systemic review to address those is in the works but the board doesn’t have details yet, said Spyropoulos.

Another issue outlined in the report is the backlog of case files in the human rights office, and the significant amount of time it takes for an incident to be resolved. New portals and changes to the reporting system aim to make it more efficient, it says.

“Part of what’s being proposed are changes on multiple fronts and one of the important ones is to address the backlog of complaints that exists in the human rights office,” he said, adding that the board plans more staff, to respond to incidents faster.

The average active human rights complaint within the office took a year and three months to be resolved, according to data from the 2019-2020 school year.

The report proves that the human rights office in its current form is completely dysfunctional, said Gary Pieters, an educator and former president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, a non-profit organization.

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“They sit at home for years waiting for that investigation to be done,” he said. He points to an incident at Queen Victoria Public School last spring, where teachers who were the target of a racist letter had to take a leave of absence while the issue is investigated. The board later issued an apology for not doing more to directly address the incident.

Delays in probing these issues unfairly keep Black educators away from their classrooms and their students, particularly Black students who need to see staff that look like them, said Pieters.

“You’ve got the victims sitting at home, and the perpetrators at work, how can that be right? The victims are further victimized by the complaint system.”

The human rights office is failing to help those who need it most, which based on the data are Black students, families and staff, he said.

Mitzie Hunter, a Liberal MPP and the former provincial education minister, says the findings of the report are alarming, she said.

Hunter led a probe of the York Regional District School Board following reports of racism in 2016 and 2017.

“What is really disturbing … is its effect on the students themselves. Those students who are impacted by the incidents, but also those who witnessed it, it wears heavily, it’s draining,” she said.

The school environment needs to be addressed for the sake of Black students and staff, she said.

“These incidents specifically need to be addressed in a fairly manner, and in a timely way,” she said.

“We want to create a whole system that recognizes that these challenges are there, they’re deeply ingrained with the history of colonialism.”